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Originally Posted by Grommit
We have been using chain drives for about 7 years and until this year have not ever used a tensioner. For drive shafts, we would just have someone pull as hard as possible on the wheel while tensioning it. This has never caused any problems for our drive shafts, chains or wheels, but we have a colorful history of chains coming off because they were loose.
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[speaking as a previous MVRT member]
You need to make sure people know that instead of an actual tensioning device, we had slotted wheel mounts. To make the chains "taught" we loosened the wheel mounting bolts, slid the wheel back until the chain was taught, and tightened the wheel mounting bolts. Before we made that nifty modification, in 98 and 99 we used teflon blocks that were slid under the runs of chain and held in by screws/velcro. Both ways seemed to work just fine.
[speaking as a current mentor]
The past 2 years on 968 we used slotted wheel mounts... which worked fine (simply because we used a bosch type frame) which enabled us to easily slide the wheel mounts on the slotted chassis material with t-nuts.
This year, we chose to weld the frame (to reduce weight) and decided to come up with a tensioning device. Strangely, we came up with something similar to 115, and used HDPE rollers of various sizes. When the chain initially stretches, we simply install a larger diameter roller and the chain is tight again. (this way isnt as elegant is I would have liked, but it was about as simple and as lightweight as we could think of at the time)
Note: All of these examples are #25 chain. #35 chain is much more forgiving and sometimes does not require tensioning.