slack in the chain

[Water Warrior 2]

[quote=Easy Rider]

Originally Posted by "Water Warrior":1i05q1k4

The amount of chain slack is mostly determined by the amount of rear wheel suspension travel. More travel = more slack.

[Please see retraction a few posts down! Sometimes what you want to say just doesn't come out right!!] :roll:

Mmmm....well....not really, at least not on MOST properly engineered bikes.
If the geometry of the rear suspension is correct, it will effectively swivel with the front sprocket pretty close to the center point of the arc....and the slack won't change that much.
That is, the actual pivot point of the rear swing arm should be pretty close to the front sprocket.

Hell, if that were universally true, some dirt bikes would need INCHES of slack in the chain.....instead of centimeters.[/quote:1i05q1k4]

Easy, a properly engineered bike can still have lots of chain slack. Depends on the designer's overall goals. My 88 KDX 200 was considered the best small bore enduro in it's time and had about 2.5 to 3 inches of slack. There was a swing arm mounted slack controller. What it consisted of was a spring loaded arm with a plastic rubbing block to control the slack. Very effective and never a problem in it's operation. The rear wheel had 11.5 inches of travel which was a smooth ride and I used every bit of it on ocassion.
And yes there were bikes with mongo wheel travel and little chain slack. They were usually high end bikes from Europe and a lot more difficult to maintain in the long run because of their design.