Bicycle Engine Kit – Sprocket Installation

Well, I figured I would do this first as it is likely the first item that should get installed as your installing your bicycle engine kit.

The reason why it is the easiest to do this first, is so that you can have your wheel back on your bike before you start installing the rest of the bicycle engine kit.

Also, this gets the hardest part done and out of the way…at least, I find this to be the hardest part. It’s really not all that difficult to install your bicycle engine kit, but the sprocket will test your patience a little bit…it may even make you curse a little if you try to rush it, lol.

 

 

This picture shows what is needed to install your sprocket.

The wrench and socket are both 10mm in size. The knife is used to cut ONE (1) of the rubber rings. The rest of the components are included within your kit…although the sprocket that comes with my kits is a chromed 48 tooth. I do have 44 tooth sprockets available, and this one was painted with a product called MetalCast (in case anyone is wondering).

  

Here you can see that only one of the rubber rings gets cut. This is so that you can fit it over the axle on the inside of the wheel.

  

Here is a normal everyday mountain bike wheel. Nothing fancy here, lol.

  

Here is where we use the rubber ring that we cut. If we hadn't of cut it, it would not be able to go around the axle.

  

Now we take our 9 bolts, and place them thru the holes in the sprocket.

  

Now, it's easiest if we lay the sprocket upside down on the table with all 9 bolts sticking up at us.

  

Now we can start working the uncut rubber ring down onto the bolts. Having the sprocket sitting on a solid surface really helps as you are pushing down on the rubber.

  

Here is what you want your rubber ring to look like on the sprocket.

  

With the rubber ring against the sprocket it'll hold the bolts in place while you put the sprocket onto the wheel.

  

Now, we can push the rubber ring that we had put around the axle up onto the bolts.

  

After the rubber comes the first metal plate. If you look close, you will see that it is over our cut rubber in a way that has an equal amount of the steel plate on each side of the cut.

  

Here is what holds it all together. First put the flat washer over the bolt, then the split lock washer, and then your nut.

  

Here is what yours should be starting to look like.

  

Now we take the second metal plate and do the same thing, but on the remaining bolts.

  

We now have all of the flat washers, lock washers, and nuts in place. Notice how we haven’t tightened anything down yet…we only started the nuts onto the bolts. There is a good reason for this, trust me.

  

Now that we have all the nuts in place, we really need to check on our alignment. This is important, and we need to pay close attention to it as we start tightening things up. Ideally, we want to have the sprocket perfectly centered around the axle hub…or as close as possible. It is a lot easier to move the sprocket around and into place now than it is after we start snugging up the bolts. If you are lucky, it will stay where you put it, if not you will need to make it move or loosen the nuts off and center it again.

  

Now we can start to snug things up a bit. With the 10mm wrench on the nut on the inside of the wheel, and the 10mm socket on the head of the bolt this gets done rather quickly. Do not tighten, only snug things up all the way around, and try to make it so they are all snugged with about the same amount of pressure. We still want to be able to move the sprocket a little if we need too.

  

Don't forget to keep an eye on the alignment of the sprocket. The closer to center, the better.

  

See, only snugged up...not tightened up. We need to be able to keep it aligned as we go.

  

When the nuts are snugged up, and it's getting harder to move that sprocket around, lay it down and take a look at your alignment. Do you have it centered around the axle hub...the closer to perfect the better. Here is where the patience and the cursing comes in handy, lol.

  

Okay, mine was out of alignment. Guess my cursing didn't help me much this morning, lol.

If you end up with this problem, you can wrestle with it, swear at it, push it, pull it, pry it. Whatever it takes to get it centered…except for using a hammer to bang on the teeth to try to move it over. If you can’t get it to move, loosen off your nuts and start again.

Do not pound it over by hitting the teeth. You do not want to damage them or you may have issues later with your chain getting stuck.

If you decide to use a screwdriver as I did, be gentle and be careful. You do not want to damage your hub…there are bearings sitting under that area that need a proper surface to run on.

  

There, after some gentle persuasion the sprocket quit fighting with me and moved a bit. This looks close to being center and I will leave it alone now.

  

Now that we have snugged, centered, snugged, and centered some more and everything is good we can finally tighten everything down. You will want this tightened to the point where the rubber is just starting to squish together, and so all the bolts have about the same amount of tension if you try to turn the nuts.

  

There, that wasn’t so bad now was it, lol. I find this to be the most pain in the you know where part of installing one of these bicycle engine kits. I pretty much hate doing the sprockets and have learnt the hard way to make sure that I get it on there right the first time…otherwise, you will end up having to redo it until it is centered. I’ve likely done over 60 of these now, and it still takes about an hour or so to get it done perfectly.

Have patience when you install your sprocket, it’s all worth it in the end.