# Cassette and crank alignment, is there such thing?



## Patchy (Jul 7, 2010)

Hi guys,
Got a cheapo Taiwanese brand bike (HASA race 5.0) with had great componentry and what felt like a good XC style frame. However after riding it abit i've noticed that the drive train's pretty weak when going through the bumpy stuff. If peddling hard on 2x1 or 2x2 and over bumps the chain on the crank will jump down to 1 (hope this makes sense). I can imitate the same thing by back peddling really fast on the same gears. Chain wants to jump from middle to little crank cog.

I never chain cross, and have been adjusting the gears until they're perfect both FD and RD yet backpeddling or bumping around will drop the chain. When i looked abit closer i noticed that the alignment of the crank rings compared to the cassette it was more higher gear biased. As in if i draw a streight line from my middle ring to my cassette it will land on the higher gears, around 7 or 8. This means when i go down to lower gears on the middle cog, the chain angle is pretty extreme and similar to chain crossing.

I looked at the alignment on my other bikes and the middle cog will land around the middle of the cassette allowing full use of all gears. Is it possible to adjust this alignment or did i just get a dog frame? Can the LBS do it?


----------



## big_papa_nuts (Mar 29, 2010)

http://sheldonbrown.com/gloss_ch.html#chainline
http://sheldonbrown.com/chainline.html

That should cover it.


----------



## Patchy (Jul 7, 2010)

big_papa_nuts said:


> http://sheldonbrown.com/gloss_ch.html#chainline
> http://sheldonbrown.com/chainline.html
> 
> That should cover it.


Nailed it papp nuts. Thanks heaps. Should have googled abit more.


----------

