Front Derailleurs - The Spawn Of Satan

[andyfraser]

When I first got my hybrid it was beautifully set up. It's a 9 speed with triple chainrings. I could use all 9 gears with the middle ring and the top and bottom 7 with the big and small chainrings respectively, all with no rubbing.

That was over 2 years ago and things wear. A few weeks ago shifting became horrible. Yesterday I replaced the cassette, chain and the gear cables. The rear re-indexed pretty easily but I cannot for the life of me get the front as good as it was. The Alivio shifters have no trim settings so for now I've left it so I get no rub with 48x11 and have to put up with only having a few gears in the middle of the cassette on the middle ring.

My next hybrid will either have hub gears or one of those single chainring set ups like SRAM X1 (or I'll just get have to get better at hills on fixed).

On the up side I replaced the 11-32 cassette with an 11-25 which works really well on my commute.

 

[earlestownflya]

triples are just a pain in the ass,i was farting around with one for days..never got it as i wanted it..so i sold the whole bike.

 

[MichaelW2]

Check the alignment of your front mech, in rotation and height.
Check for damage and bends. You can reprofile a mech with pliers.
Ensure that the cable is routed and anchored in the correct way and that you correct for initial stretch.

Or convert to a simple hub gear like Alfine.

 

[andyfraser]

Check the alignment of your front mech, in rotation and height.
Check for damage and bends. You can reprofile a mech with pliers.
Ensure that the cable is routed and anchored in the correct way and that you correct for initial stretch.

Or convert to a simple hub gear like Alfine.

I did check everything. Nothing seems to be wrong. I'll double check everything again this weekend when I have more time.

The only thing that puts me off hub gears is removing the wheel. I'll be putting my winter tyres on the hybrid in a few weeks and derailleurs make that easy. I could always keep my hybrid just for winter tyres and get a hub geared bike for the rest of the year of course.

 

[mjr]

Typical Sturmey hub wheels are easier to remove than ones with chain tugs IMO, but even they're not impossible. Most tubes can be patched without wheel removal so it really only comes down to tyre replacement or similar serious changes.

 

[ANT 666]

Fixing a tube like that on the side of the road would be a massive pain in the bottecelli.You just want to bung in a new tube and fix the old one when its conveniant.

 

[Hugh Manatee]

Look for an old Shimano thumb shifter. DX or XT and the quality even after all these years will be first class. No indexing but micro adjustment is easy. I have them on all my mountain bikes even the one with rapid fire on the right.

 

[mjr]

Fixing a tube like that on the side of the road would be a massive pain in the bottecelli.You just want to bung in a new tube and fix the old one when its conveniant.

No, I don't. If I'm in a hurry, I want to remove the sharp and put in a sealant/inflation canister, not waste time and get my hands dirty swapping tubes and pumping up from flat. Otherwise, patching is quicker than swapping tubes because you don't even need to take the tyre off all the way round

 

[raleighnut]

Triples are a doddle to set up, all you need to remember is that the middle ring position is set by cable tension only. Get the centre ring position right with tension and the outer and inner are set by the stops. It is quite usual for the cable to appear 'slack' when the chain is on the inner ring but the mech can't move inward any further due to the limiter stop. As long as when the middle ring is selected the mech is central on the centre ring (it'd help if you set the rear mech in the centre of the cassette too, 5th on a 9speed) then the indexing is fine.

 

[andytheflyer]

I put XT triggers on my 3 x 9 Shimano setup on the recumbent, indexed very easily, and works very time. As @raleighnut says. Triples do work, but you may nee to pay attention to the angle and height of the cage.

 

[Kestevan]

Horrible things.
The smallest measurement known to man - the difference in tension between a perfectly working triple and one with problems.........

 

[andyfraser]

Triples are a doddle to set up, all you need to remember is that the middle ring position is set by cable tension only. Get the centre ring position right with tension and the outer and inner are set by the stops. It is quite usual for the cable to appear 'slack' when the chain is on the inner ring but the mech can't move inward any further due to the limiter stop. As long as when the middle ring is selected the mech is central on the centre ring (it'd help if you set the rear mech in the centre of the cassette too, 5th on a 9speed) then the indexing is fine.

I'm going to go back to first principles at the weekend. It should be logical: if the middle ring is ok and the limit screws are set correctly (they are) then your method will work. I'm an complete idiot when it comes to mechanicals though but I get there in the end!

 

[andyfraser]

Horrible things.
The smallest measurement known to man - the difference in tension between a perfectly working triple and one with problems.........

It should be called the Planck tension!

 

[Crackle]

Triples are a doddle to set up, all you need to remember is that the middle ring position is set by cable tension only. Get the centre ring position right with tension and the outer and inner are set by the stops. It is quite usual for the cable to appear 'slack' when the chain is on the inner ring but the mech can't move inward any further due to the limiter stop. As long as when the middle ring is selected the mech is central on the centre ring (it'd help if you set the rear mech in the centre of the cassette too, 5th on a 9speed) then the indexing is fine.

Spot on.

 

[markharry66]

Having been through this pain recently I can confirm they are rollocks.