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Old 09-16-09, 06:28 PM
  #13  
santacruising22
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Originally Posted by desertdork
Did you previously run this crank with your ultegra 6503 front derailleur?

The reason I ask is that the FD-6503 was designed to be used with much larger chainrings; the ultegra FC-6503 crankset had 52/42/30 rings. Your 42t large ring is much smaller. Ideally, you'd like the radius of the derailleur cage to be a bit closer. The derailleur will need to be mounted much lower to reach the chainrings; add this to the fact that the cage is rather long. This is where I think you could have an issue: the tail end of the cage is too low to clear the chainstay when attempting to shift onto the small (or even middle) chainring. Maybe some others can add their thoughts to this.

One advantage of using front friction shifting is that you have a lot of freedom with derailleur choice. Your crankset has more in common with a mtb drivetrain than it does a road drivetrain. A mtb front derailleur might be a better choice with your chainrings. NOS Deore/LX/XT derailleurs can be found reasonably priced, plus they were offered with 28.6 clamps.
This was the setup that the person I got it from had - same crank and front derailleur - seemed to shift into everything fine - I did have a feeling that the crank was too small, but I don't really have the bucks to overhaul everything right now. Trying to really get the essentials here - if others think its a big issue I would consider a different front derailleur...but wondering if I could still use my shimano Bar-end shifters...they're just really cool looking
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