lifeinajug

Anyone have opinions about this? I need to update my derailleur as my old one is kicked and was thinking it would be easier to shift to lower gears being in the Appalachians at that... Anywho, thanks in advance for the advice.

Have Fun!
Travis

nun

Doesn't really make much difference, the issue comes when you have a couple of bikes with different "sense" derailleurs. Leads to some bad changes for a few miles.

BikEthan

The main advantage I can think of is that if you break a RD cable, or shifter you won't be stuck on your small cog.

Rowan

No, you will be stuck in your big cog which can be equally as irritating. Either way, if you know a little about derailleurs, you can adjust the set screws. Or ensure you have a spare cable on hand and replace the original.

If you use a gear shifting system with indicators, the sequence using a low-normal derailleur will be reversed, so if you are in the big cog (normally 1), you will be showing 8 or 9 on the dial.

From my understanding, the low-normal system was introduced for people who couldn't comprehend that you had to press the thumby on one side to move to a lower gear, yet on the other side you press the thumby to move to a higher gear.

In my opinion, a low-normal derailleur won't compensate for poor gear-shifting technique. If you can't shift smoothly under pressure now (ie, you crunch gears because the chain is way too taut, and you don't anticipate changes to low gears far enough ahead), I don't think a changeover to the low-normal system will help much.

Robert_in_ca

I used it because I was using Kelly Takeoffs, and it made much more sense that way.