gugie 

"Back in the day"...The SunTour MkII front derailleur was my "go to" repair/upgrade derailleur. The band clamp went on first, then the derailleur. Most front derailleurs, when you tighten the swing arm, it moves the derailleur angle to the chainrings, so it's always a bit of trial and error to get it right. Not this baby. Also, if you grab the back of it and try and swing it back and forth, it was more rigid than others. Finally, although it was not advertised as a triple, I never found one that this wouldn't work on. Oh, and it was pretty inexpensive. You can still find them on the big auction site. Here's a new one:



So I'm on the first day of my annual mid-life crisis bike tour, riding on the I90 bike trail in Seattle, headed east to North Bend, when I feel and hear a weird noise. I pull over and look down and find this:



I was in a hurry to find a bike shop (Gregg's in Bellevue was only 2 miles off the trail), and forgot to take a closeup, but the band broke right where the derailleur body attaches to it. In retrospect, this made sense-a high strain area. But I'd never seen this before, and wondered how common it was.

Sir_Name 

Wow - I can see how that would make a strange noise. Is the band in the trash now? If not, a pic of the failure would be interesting to see.

gugie 

Unfortunately it's in the recycle box at Gregg's. Thinking about it, the chain must have dragged the derailer up and over the chainrings and ripped the cable off. Both the cable and cable clamp didn't appear to be damaged. The cable was frayed a bit, but I was able to "unfray" it, twisting it back, so outside of the derailer, nothing appeared to be harmed.

The Golden Boy 

I'm glad that didn't go 'catastrophic' or anything- get caught into the RD then into the spokes or something.

Hopefully you've got a cool replacement!!

bikemig 

That's a drag about the FD. That's a good looking triple crank. What are you running?

I like the name of your bike tour, the annual mid life crisis bike tour. It's worth having a midlife crisis every year if you get a cool tour out of it!

gugie 

Beggars can't be choosers-it was a Shimano Alivio, only thing they had in the shop that would work on my "skinny" seat tube with spacers + triple. I'm waiting to see if I can find any other instance of the Cyclone MkII band breaking. If not, I'll replace the new derailleur with a NOS one I have on my workbench.

That's a Rene Herse triple. Expensive, not what I needed, but what I wanted!

And, yes, what's a mid life crisis without a bike tour?

Here's my journal, if you've got some time to kill: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/GandSEpic2015

bikemig 

Yeah, I read it earlier at the beginning of the trip but you've added a lot to it. It's very cool. So you're doing a trip with just a handlebar bag and a saddlebag bag? That's great.

gugie 

Yep, choose your clothing wisely, it's easy-peazy. The only cycling-specific clothes I bring are a couple of pairs of bike shorts and shoes plus an outer short made for cycling that's made to go over your cycling shorts. Everything else looks like and doubles as "real clothing". My handlebar bag is pretty big, and I brought an 11 liter sized saddle bag with side pockets for this tour, which also expands if needed. On one stretch we needed extra food, so that came in handy.

What's really impressive is my buddy Phil (The Secretor in the journal). He uses just one of those seat post attached "aero" bags. His clothing was just two changes of cycling clothes, a rain jacket, and a pair of chonies to sleep in. He'd take a shower and clean his clothes at the same time, then change into the next day's riding clothes to go out to dinner. I don't have guts to walk around in the evening and go into a small town bar and grill, but he didn't care. 20 years ago I think we'd get a weird look, but, at least in the area we were riding, people were used to bicycle tourists.

bikemig 

I saw that too. That was impressive that he got away with that little.

I don't know if I could do it but I'd like to try to do a camping trip with just a large saddle bag and a handlebar bag.

clubman 

Do they break?
Eventually, always.

The same band is used on the clamp-on Symmetric downtube shifters which pop up cheaply now and then.

gugie 

Camping, as in sleeping bag? If you could deal with a bivy sack, it's possible. We did 8 days in hotels, I could replace a computer and some clothes with a bag and bivy.

bikemig 

All my touring up until know has been with full panniers and gear. But I've been thinking of going on a diet weight wise when cycle touring.