BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

If you're talking about what I think you are, I recently started a thread on this, as I too started experiencing this.

http://bike-pgh.org/bbpress/topic/chain-skipping-getting-really-annoying

I found Sheldon Brown's explanation very helpful (he always is):

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/derailer-adjustment.html#skipping

It seems like replacing the chain is the way to go probably, and maybe also the cassette/freewheel? I got a new chain but have not had a chance to replace it yet, so I can't testify as to how well that works.

Ok back to the pawls

If you think about a clock, it only engages at 3,6,9,12. The nicer the hub, then it engages at every hour.

More than you wanted to know ...

http://www.parktool.com/repair/readhowto.asp?id=45

Hope that helps.

-Joe

I dunno, xjoex, it sounds to me more like what you were on to the first time, the ratchet pawls. That's different.

schmoo my guess is it is the number of engagement points in your hub. The more engagement points the faster you will feel your hub catch and provide torque.

It's not necessarily the number of pawls, as in King hubs which use helical splines.

the standard hub has 24 teeth for engagement....king has 72 teeth which engage the spline. Industry Nine has 120 points of engagement with 6 pawls....lots of different configurations.

the faster the engagement the less you'll wait for the wheel to catch up to your legs. This gets very important in situations where you need immediate reaction to your pedal stroke.

I notice the difference in the number of engagement points when pedaling through extremely technical sections of rock gardens while mountain biking....sometimes you need the torque immediately and waiting for it causes you to lose balance and miss a line, or fall.

think of it as the number of degrees your wheel has to turn before it engages...

24 engagement points....your hub needs to rotate 15 degrees before it engages

72 points....5 degrees

120 points...3 degrees

BIG difference, in some situations. you may not feel it while you are spinning, but you'll feel it when you are starting your pedal stroke or increasing your speed with the application of significant torque

I'm going with pratt and joe on this one. I turn the crank with the chain off, and it goes smoothly as fast as I can make it go. With the chain on, lined up and properly tensioned, I noticed that it takes the hub a split second to engage every once in a while. It must be where it engages, that just makes sense. Like I said, it's not the worst thing in the world. Now, given that there seems to be a word for everything (I recently learned about brinelling), there has to be a term for this little gap.

schmoo, in my opinion a ton of engagement points on a road bike are worthless. In fact since there is more contact in the hub with more engagement, the rotational speed of the wheel may be slower (not sure on that one).

As for a term for the gap? you got me.

Engagement Delay, or ED?

It might be worth cleaning and relubing your freewheel. Gear oil, not grease.

In my engineering classes (a bazillion years ago), the term we used was "slop". Essentially the amount of play in a geared system, but this may be more of a "slop at engagement" scenario, so there may be a better term for it. So I'm no real help.

What is the sound of one pawl skipping?

Another term that might work is backlash or play, but these more appropriately describe when you reverse a geared system and the teeth take a certain distance to re-engage (think tuning a guitar, or at least I always get this when I tune mine).