Don’t you hate it when you are out on the open road, trying to enjoy a nice bike ride and your bike chain keeps falling off the drivetrain? As if riding safely isn’t hard as it is, you also have to worry about losing your balance because of the chain. 

If this is a problem that is constant and persisting with your bike, chances are your bike chain needs a little tightening. Now, you must be pondering how to tighten a bike chain in the easiest way possible. Because who wants to go the hard route anyway? Don’t worry I’ve got your back.

This is a very common problem that presents itself to almost every bike rider after they have been using their bike for a long period of time. 

This might be an issue that keeps reappearing and having to take a trip down to your local garage every time your chain starts acting up is purely enraging. 

I can’t remember the number of times I’ve had to trouble myself to go down and get it fixed. So to save you all some money, time and effort, here are some ways in which you could tighten a bike chain, on your own, so that you never have to depend on the garage being opened to take your next ride. 

How to tighten a bike chain?

If you have a single gear bike, the process of chain tightening is way less complicated than multiple geared bikes. All you have to do is follow the instructions given below:-

Step 1

Grab a pair of gloves. Latex gloves are preferable but any type of gloves would do. This is to prevent grease and other stuff stuck to the chain, from damaging your skin and hands. 

Also keep a dry washcloth in handy, just in case you find the need to use it.

Step 2

Invert your bike on a stand. Your bike should be resting on its handlebar and bike seat. 

What you want to do next is you want to make sure that the entire chain and wheels are easily accessible to you, the position of your bike is essential to the rest of the process. 

Step 3

Once you are satisfied with your reach, start loosening up the axle nuts also known as the bolts that connect your rear wheels to the rest of the bike. 

In doing so you will slowly begin to loosen up the tyre and it will be able to move freely back and forth upto a certain radius/diameter. 

Step 4

Once the rear wheel is loose enough to move, start pulling at back little by little whilst simultaneously feeling the tension of the bike chain. 

The more you pull it back, the tighter the bike chain becomes. Move your tyre around until you feel like you’ve reached your desired result.

Step 5

When you feel like you’ve gotten the chain as tight as you wanted it to be, start tightening the bolts of the rear wheel to fix it in place. Make sure that by doing so, you are ensuring that the wheel is fixed and in place.

Step 6

Boost the pedals and move the wheels around to see if the chain functions properly. 

Keep in mind that if the chain is too tight, it might snap off when you take the bike out for a ride the next time. If the pressure feels fine, try to take a bike for a spin and see if it feels like it would feel normally. 

Step 7

Now that your bike is all fixed, lube up the bike chain in order to give you enough flexibility and room to work with. 

This is an important step as all the cleaning and tightening might make the chain a bit rigid and when you apply any sort lubricant like grease,oil etc., it frees up the chain and gives it more momentum.

Your bike chain is now tightened and ready to use. 

If you follow all of the above given steps correctly, you won’t ever have to worry about going to a mechanic every time you hit a bump and your bike will function as good as new

If you have a bike with multiple gears, the process is a little bit more complicated and includes a couple of extra steps. 

Now don’t let these extra steps scare you, it’s as easy as it was for the single gear but since multiple gear bikes have more components connected to the main chain, it requires a little more tweaking.

Steps for tightening a bike chain on a multiple gear bike

Step 1

This steps goes just as it does in a single gear bike, put on a pair of gloves to protect your skin from damage and cuts from sharp ridges. 

Get a washcloth to clean areas in which you need better vision of the parts. 

Step 2

You could either use your bike stand to incline your bike to an angle that you prefer working with or you could invert the bike and let it rest on the handlebars and saddle. 

While both of these ways work, the one wherein you have the bike sitting upside down is more effective as you have a cleaner field of vision and more room to work with. 

Step 3

When you are sure that you can reach each and every part of your bike, lock the bike in that position. 

Now to start the process, you need to look for the derailleur screw located at the very back of the derailleur, this is the case in most, if not all multi-gear bikes. This screw is the one right next to where you can see the alphabet B engraved. 

Since you wish to tighten the chain, rotate the screw towards your right side. 

Step 4

Since this is a multi-gear bike, the rear wheel is connected to a multitude of components, therefore getting a hold of it and moving it is a little more complicated than in single gear bikes. 

The primary focus is to get the lever of the back brakes to loosen and give way so that the rear wheels can be disconnected from the said cable. Once you have done that, raise the quick release lever, this is going to suspend the rear wheel for you to maneuver.

Step 5

Once the wheel is free to move, pull it back just enough for the tension to increase a considerable amount but not to the point that the chain breaks. 

Make sure that once you are certain about the amount of tension on the wheel, check if the chain can move half an inch in both directions, once you reach the perfect amount, release the quick release lever to fix the wheel in that position.

Step 6

When you’re happy with the amount of tension on the break chain, reconnect the correlating cable and make sure that every other change you made was changed back to the way it was. 

Spin the rear wheel and ensure that it can move freely without damaging the frame or any other parts. 

Ride the bike to make sure that there is nothing wrong with the functions of it.

Step 7

Lubricate! Lubrication does not only allow free and smooth movement of the bike chain but it also prevents the chain from being abused by pressure. 

Lubrication is very important after you make any changes to the bike chain, it helps the chain fall back into the normal pattern of work.

This is how you fix a loose chain on a multi-gear bike. 

Once you are done fixing the chain, in order to prevent it from loosening up again, here are some tips you could follow and some information that will help you maintain a healthy bike.

What causes the chain to loosen and what can one do to prevent it?

There are various reasons why a chain might loosen:

Reason 1: Age

After a certain point of use, the ridges and the curvatures of a bike chain start wearing and disintegrating. Due to this the chain can’t function as well as it did in the past and there is no specific cause for it. 

Old bike chains obviously do not work as well as new bike chains and there is no denying it or fixing it.

Solution: There is no real solution to the bike chain being too old, you could try tightening it but the problem would remain persistent because the chain would have reached the end of its life. 

The only way to fix this problem is to replace the chain with a new one.

Reason 2: Wear (Single gear)

Chain loosening is a very common thing to happen with single gear bikes as against multi-gear bikes. 

On multi-gear bikes, the system gets the luxury of shedding some load with changing gears, as the gear is changed to one, more muscle power is used and less mechanical power. Since there is limited load on the chain, it wears slower. 

Whereas in single gear bikes, pressure is maintained on the chain throughout, this leads to faster wearing. Therefore the chain loosens much faster than multi-gear bikes.

Solution: You cannot really do anything about the amount of pressure your chain takes, however since these bikes are built in this way, the chains are also built stronger. 

This means there’s more room for tightening.

Conclusion

These are some of the ways in which you could tighten your bike chain when the situation calls for it and you don’t need to rely on any garages or mechanics for it.