Mountain Biking - Rear deraileur size

I broke the Deore LX rear Deraileur :mad: on my Trek 6700 this Saturday. I am presently running 42 32 22 and 11-32 cassette. I am going to upgrade to XT and was wondering if the medium cage GS might not be a better choice than the long SGS. I am not planning on running anything bigger than 32 in the rear so according to the Shimano website I should be able to use the GS. Any experience with this?

My LBS wants $86 for the XT, I can find the same deraileur for $38 online. What is the deal with these price differences? It looks like the LBSs are realy getting hosed on what they pay for these parts to have to charge that much.:confused:

In my experience the longer cage derailleur always pays off in the end. Somewhere down the road you may decide to change that gearing and then the short cage will fall on its face. I personally feel that that extra half inch of derailleur cage is not a huge disadvantage in clearing logs and such. If you are going to wreck a derailleur you are going to wreck it no matter how long or short it is. The medium cage derailleurs are better suited to double cranks up front like on cyclocross bikes. As for the price you gotta ask yourself what is worth more to you - the extra 40 bucks which gets knocked to about 25 (maybe less if the shop hoses you for buying online) once you get it installed, or being able to get it warrantied by your local shop when something goes wrong with it, not to mention getting it installed free.

-Ryan

Buy it online. Don't even bother going into the shop.. most of them will just be *******s to you because they know they can't match the prices online. But that's not your problem, now is it? Setting up a rear derailler is very simple actually. Read the instructions, and you'll be okay. I say go with long cage.. you never know.

It could be his problem when the bike shop isn't there anyomore and he needs something fixed.... Talk to them and say you found a lower price on it and wanted to see how well they could do. Or even better, and alot of shops repsect this. Tell them you found it online and you'd like to support the LBS, and ask them if they could do any better on a price. If not then get it online, if so then both of you walk away happy. And I'm sure since you let them know you wanted to support them they'll help you out later on if you need things. Just my though on the online thing.

And as it was stated earlier by BikerRyan the medium cage is designed more for someone running only two rings up front, a short cage is designed, for single ring upfront and/or roadbikes(look at their der. they are short cage for the most part). Long cage is the easiest way to go for mountain biking, dont have to worry about gear sizes and all that. A medium cage will give you a little more tension on the chain so you don't get as much chain slap, but it's hardly noticable(spelling?) ha ha. That's about it, hope it helps!

:beer: