Originally Posted by
RubeRad
That's great to know, I didn't realize that. So I guess I'll pop it down to the shop and get that sucker straightened out. It'll be great to have nice shifting.
So it seemed to shift fine with the old 11-36 cassette; I guess the point is the goatlink has some amount of manufacturing imprecision, and my hanger actually needs to be misaligned so that with the goatlink the compound system will be aligned?
No, I'd say that your hanger might not have been aligned perfectly, but it didn't matter because it was the normal short length. But then you doubled the length with the Goatlink, causing any angle offset to be magnified.
AND, you Goatlink isn't necessarily straight, either. It can have a difference in angle between the top and bottom just like the frame hanger. Regardless of how it happened, your derailleur needs to be bolted to something that is in the proper plane with the frame, otherwise it will make it seem like the index points are compressed together.
So, next time you run into something that appears to need a hammer or file on a bicycle, do feel free to check in here first.