Product Review - Paul's Melvin Chain Tensioner

For a short time while constructing the Single Speed this Winter, I had a Paul's Component Engineering Melvin Chain Tensioner on the bike allowing me to test the ride of the bike while still not having the last few pieces (the wheelset) ready. It allowed me to try out the tensioner approach to converting a conventional frame into a SS and then finally trying another popular method, the use of the White Industries Eric's ENO Eccentric Hub.

The Melvin is a little different than many of the other tensioners out there like the Surly Singleator, which uses a single jockey pulley to take up any slack. The Melvin is basically a defeatured rear dérailleur. It uses a two-pulley system tensioned like a regular dérailleur to take up all the slack. Since it approaches tension removal in this way, there is still quite a bit of adjustment it has over the single-pulley systems. Paul's claims that a 2-ring front can be used without any problems with the Melvin. This is, in fact a true claim as I placed a second ring up front and tried the switch. This worked acceptably.

Straight out of the box it can be bolted on and the chain will align with most freewheel and crank combinations. However, there is still the ability to adjust the positioning in and out via swapping the position of the spacing washers on the mounting bolt. Fairly easy providing you know how to pop a retaining clip.

One of the biggest problems with the Melvin is that you must thread the chain through the pulleys. But after routing the chain through, the tension the Melvin applies works against you as you increase tension by drawing the chain ends together. It is difficult to do this with only a pair of hands. Another frustrating problem came when I tried to pull the rear wheel especially when the chain is left on the bike. The Melvin needs to be held back and in place to remove the wheel. This sounds easy, but everything and it's mother got in the way to just drop the wheel out. Since it doesn't really pivot at the mounting bolt, it doesn't get out of the way. I got frustrated a lot with this little problem.

While riding, it seemed to produce a lot of noise. As if the chainline was way off and was ready to drop off. It always sounded like I was between gear and not like the silent machine I was after.

Conclusion - albeit one of the more interesting chain tensioners for SS conversions out there, the few problems with wheel mounting helped to solidify my final direction of the White ENO Hub. Great novelty piece but less than thrilled with the performance return on the price.