Road Cycling - Front Derailleur Issue

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Raedeke
07-22-03, 02:58 PM
I have the 105 Group and tend to continually fine tune the front derailleur as I ride. Depending on the terrain sometimes I'm moving it to the left (hills), others times back out to the right(flats). On a recent ride, I overheard someone saying they had multiple positions or clicks per gear (perhaps as much as 2-3). But I didn't have a chance to look at what he had or ask him about it.

The 105 has three maybe four steps for the whole triple crankset. Is there a derailleur that offers more steps so I could avoid fiddling with the adjustment on the downtube as I go...

I realize that cross chaining is bad, but I've got to think that dragging the chain against the derailleur for miles has got to be as bad or worse.

And I love running 52/12 at 24mph and hitting a hill and either grinding it up or dropping down to 52/23 and spinning my way to the top without getting out of the big ring...

Your thoughts as always are appreciated...

R
:beer:

roadfix
07-22-03, 03:27 PM
It's not your derailleur, it's your shifter that is indexed.... There's not a whole lot you can do there unless you wanna convert your front shifter to a barend or downtube friction shifter like Lance's bike...... I don't think you'd want that...
Rich Clark
07-22-03, 04:48 PM
Cross chaining is bad. Even if you can do it without rubbing the FD, it accelerates wear on the chain, chainring, and cogs.

Newer STI levers above Sora do have "trim" functionality -- a short push that moves the FD over a bit without shifting to the next chainring. On a double you should have two positions for each ring to help you center the FD over the ring. On a properly adjusted derailleur, that should be enough.

RichC

Raedeke
07-22-03, 05:11 PM
I have a triple - which explains the 4 positions for the three gears.
I do use the "Short Push" that you talked about - but obviously works only in one direction and I hate having to keep my hand on that all the time...

I guess I should look for an easier way to do the fine adjustments on the downtube. I've seen better finger wheels on other models - These are just too small.

R