Road Cycling - Derailleur tuning

Hi all. I just got a 2001 C-Dale R3000Si the other day. It's freaking awesome! Quite a step up from my 2002 Fuji Ace.
There's only one problem with my new bike; the rear derailleur doesn't seem to work properly. It was skipping one of the middle gears at first. I could get it (in both front chainrings) to go real quick and smooth over the 5 smallest and 3 biggest cogs, but that 4th easiest one would make all sorts of rattling and skipping noises. Seeing as how I'm no Lance, I need the middle gears the most.
I have "Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance", and have been fooling endlessly with the rear derailleur adjustments while reading the section dedicated to it in the book, but I can't seem to solve my problem. I finally just adjusted the derailleur so that I got rid of the smallest (hardest) cog, and that seems to have solved the middle gear problem, but now I'm still missing a gear! I want my 9 speed DA, not 8 speed!
Oh, and the shift indicator doesn't work, if that helps at all. It stays on the hardest reading.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Cole

Hi all. I just got a 2001 C-Dale R3000Si the other day. It's freaking awesome! Quite a step up from my 2002 Fuji Ace.
There's only one problem with my new bike; the rear derailleur doesn't seem to work properly. It was skipping one of the middle gears at first. I could get it (in both front chainrings) to go real quick and smooth over the 5 smallest and 3 biggest cogs, but that 4th easiest one would make all sorts of rattling and skipping noises. Seeing as how I'm no Lance, I need the middle gears the most.
I have "Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance", and have been fooling endlessly with the rear derailleur adjustments while reading the section dedicated to it in the book, but I can't seem to solve my problem. I finally just adjusted the derailleur so that I got rid of the smallest (hardest) cog, and that seems to have solved the middle gear problem, but now I'm still missing a gear! I want my 9 speed DA, not 8 speed!
Oh, and the shift indicator doesn't work, if that helps at all. It stays on the hardest reading.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
ColeWhen all adjustments fail, it's time to consider cable/casing issues or possibly a bent derailer hanger.

When normal adjustments fail, I think that the smart thing is to start at the beginning and make sure that everything is in the default mode.

In your case, the first thing that I would do would be to check the derailleur hanger alignment. Bike shops have a tool to to that. If the hanger is off by a little bit, no amount of derailleur adjusting will make it right.

I've recently discovered that my rear derailleur hanger on my MTB was bent, i'd wondered why it wasn't shifting properly...Tried to adjust it back (probably the wrong way...with a crescent wrench), but just can't get it right.

Ordered a new one from the manufacturer, but it takes a special tool to remove it. Any Idea where to buy one of those special tools? I tried my LBS, but noone has one for sale, but they are more than willing to charge me to change it out for me. Also, what is the exact name of the tool, and do they fit most bikes (my roadie has the same "slotted nut" on the back for the derailleur hanger.

thanks...

Do you have a picture of the nut? I just looked at mine and its an allen wrench, so no help there.

Special tool? Mine is just a screw with a locknut. There's about 20 replacement derailleurs hanging off the back of my LBS.