In yesterday's race, the chain hopped off the bottom pulley of my rear deraileur like five times. At best, it was a pain. At worst, it sucked into the deraileur into the wheel making an awful spokes in a woodchipper noise (luckily, I broke no spokes).

Since the derailleur is an old RX-100 out of the junk box, I've decided it's ready for retirement. The only question now is way to replace it with? Do you guys run MTB or road equipment on the back end of your drive train? What are some of the weird cross-compatibility issues you've run into? Right now I'm running an 8-speed 11 - 23 hyperglide cassette on the back. I'm using 8-speed shimano barcon shifters set on friction.

I was thinking of replacing with an LX or DEORE rear deraileur. Any thoughts / tips?

Thanks,
Chuck

i run all road stuff, 9-speed campy. i've never had any problems.

The trick to keeping your chain on is to have as short of a chain as possible and that usually means road stuff in the back of the drive train. I think the only advantage to using MTB deraileurs is that they're compatible with the wide 11-30+ cogsets. If you have enough gears with your 11-23 cassette than you're probably better off with a road deraileur.

I agree with shunter, since you are only running 11-23 no reason to get the MTB deraileur, unless you want to go to a megarange cassette in the future.

The MTB thinking ran along the lines that the tensioner spring for the cage might be a little stronger and mitigate alot of the cage flop. Shortening the chain would seem to accomplish thing. Thanks for the advice.