MTB Forks

Everybody knows it. It’s getting colder outside so you decide to put on your new jeans instead of some shorts.
You are riding your bike and sometimes there is a strange feeling on your right leg. After a while you stop to look what it is. You look down and now you can see it. There is a small hole in your jeans. This is awful! So what you really need is a chain protection (later on you will see a unique chain protection). With a chain protection this won’t happen anymore. You can wear whatever type of trousers you want. Jeans, shorts (a chain protection also prevents your leg of getting dirty), you can even wear the new suit trousers. The chain guard will protect it. Well it is called a “chain” protection. Of course it will protect the chain but you can buy a new chain for 10$. A new jeans will cost minimum 20$. You can see the difference? A chain guard is also a very cheap upgrade for your bike.

Let’s come to the more interesting part.

You got a chain protection that fulfills your style? Let’s start to install your new chain guard to your bike. It is very simple.

On the right side of your crank there is a hole in the middle of the chain rings. Inside the hole there has to be a thread.
Now get your new chain guard out of the packing.
Try to fix it with the one hand to the position it should be at the end.
Get the screw out of the packing and screw it into the thread you saw before.
That’s it. If there is a cap for the screw put the cap on the screw.
Congratulation! You just installed a chain protection in maybe 5 minutes!
You got a mountain bike? Everybody tells you that a chain protection is useless and doesn’t fit to a real mountain bike? Don’t listen to them. It is useful and the modern chain guards are really stylish.

Now you will see something really special. You can’t buy it. I talked to many different people. I was in so many different shops. But every time there was just one answer. No! It is not possible to install a chain protection on a XT crank. This was so awful and made me so angry that I decided to do it by myself.

The situation:

I got a Shimano XT crank and there is no thread inside the hole in the middle of the crank. So you can’t screw a bolt there to fix the chain protection. A special chain guard doesn’t exist. What to do? After putting so many bikes together suddenly I got it.

The solution:

I was installing a MTB Headset and there is the star nut you have to put into the steerer tube of your fork because inside the tube there is no thread. So inside my crank’s “tube” there is also no thread. So I tried to put the star nut into the crank’s tube. The star nut was too big so I took my nippers and bend it so that it fits to the tube. Then I hammered the modified star nut into the tube, took a stylish protection and fixed it with the top cap and the cap bolt.

The result:

And now I got a chain protection for a Shimano XT crank. So will someone tell me that it’s impossible again?