Hi,

I'm new to working with bikes and I need to sight a RD hanger. I think I understand the process. Go to the hardware store and get a 10mm fine pitch bolt that is as long as I can find and a square. take off the RD and thread the bolt into the hanger. but I'm kind of confused as to where to put the square. :s

This is exactly what my bike looks like:
See how the drop out is all slanted and it's rounded? kind of throwing me off. I'm sure it's simple so if someone could point me in the right direction.

The configuration of the hanger shouldn't matter at all. The bolt is a pivot point for a beam to reach the rim at several points around its circumference. The distance from the beam to the rim must be the same at all points. To do this the beam must be square (or at least consistently angled) to the bolt. How you make this happen is strictly up to you.

I recommend you take it to your LBS and have them show you what they do to align the hanger.

If you have a spare rear wheel with a threaded axle it will screw into the der. hanger. If it is parallel to the wheel in the dropouts the hanger is aligned. If not you can use the extra wheel as a lever to bend the hanger. The hanger on that bike is a bolt on and shouldn't be retrued more than once or twice.

As for alignment of the RD-hanger, this is the classic tool found in the USA. Other companies make them, too:

https://www.parktool.com/products/det...=48&item=DAG-2

Don't waste your time. Either buy a hanger alignment tool or take the bike to a shop that has one.

Absolutely correct. This needs to be very accurate, you can't get close enough without the hanger alignment tool, not to mention you could break the hanger or the frame if you do it wrong.

There was a thread a little while back about a DIY tool. It seemed like it would do the trick. FWIW, despite what others have written, the RD does not need to be very accurately aligned. In fact, the only time I've had shifting issues due to hanger alignment, it was way off, like a 1.5"+ difference on the alignment beam. I checked all my other bikes, which shifted perfectly, and they were all off a noticeable amount with no ill effects.

very imformative, thanks guys. My bike is at the LBS. It's a really small place run by a friend. they were telling me i probably have a RD problem and I never saw them test the hanger first so I was trying to figure out how to do it myself. looks like the best thing to do is take my bike for a ride and find a place with proper tools.

100% Fail.

Either you have no idea what proper shifting is supposed to perform like or your tool blows. On 10/11s systems a small amount of hanger alignment will cause the shifting to degrade.

Yeah, the more rear cogs your bike has the more perfect the hanger alignment has to be. I can eyeball a 7-speed hanger but i need to use a gauge to get a 9 or 10-speed to index to my satisfaction.

i went to the shop and they didn't have the hanger alignment tool so i took my chances and just tugged on with a hex. Eye balled it and just barely pushed it in two directions. thought i got lucky but she slipped once on a downshift on the way home. got it REAL close though, if it would have been a 7 speed I'm sure it would have been perfect. upside is i know it's the hanger now for sure. i'll find someone with the tool or buy one myself (the hanger alignment tool barely costs more than a new hanger). thanks for the help guys.

Back atcha chief 100% fail x 2, first for confusing your opinion for knowledge and second for poor reading comprehension. I use the Park tool and only speak from experience. For example, my 10s ultegra bike was off ~ 1", yet shifted perfectly.

Oh yea, I consider correct shifting to be when I move the lever to the next click, the bike quickly shifts to the next gear - it ain't rocket science despite your attempts to make it seem that way.

BTW, why do you think it's the hanger, being that you're new to working on bikes? Have your tried adjusting the cable tension to fix shifting?

oh yeah I tried all that and had a bike shop try adjusting it. I'm new but trying to learn. I stayed up a couple of nights after work reading and even reset my MTB for practice. Although the bike shop thought it was the derailer I thought it was just the hanger b/c the derailer hadn't really been even bumped and I read that generally people mistake a hanger problem for an RD problem. I figured either the hanger or DR was bent b/c when indexing was set correctly the middle was skipping. they said the hanger was fine but i didn't trust their verdict b/c they never tested it except by eye (these guys mostly work with MTBs so maybe that's why). so mostly I just wanted to test it before i dumped $ on a new expensive RD on a bike I'd just bought.
but like i wrote earlier, i got impatient this morning when i couldn't fid the right tool and just bent the damn thing with a hex wrench the way I thought it should go. Actually kind of suprised the guy at the shop i think Since the shifting fell into place I'm guessing it was the hanger? I'm new to road bikes and this is my 1st carbon I'll take it really light on the bike until I can get a proper alignment.

I wouldn't bring my bike to a shop that didn't have a DAG-2 - or equivalent - as this is such an important adjustment. And a very common one as well. If the shop was run by a friend, I might be persuaded to chip in 50/50 for the store to purchase one - as long as I'd have access to it anytime I needed it.

As stands, I own one. They are very easy to master.

...so I found a better bike shop to bring my bike to.

Bent hangers tend to cause bad-shifting across the board. Or at the ends of the range, not the middle. What is "skipping"? The chain over longitudinally over the cogs? Or laterally like it's trying to shift into a different gear?

for instance I could shift 1-5 and 8-10. but shifting to 6 made it go to 7. no amount of adjusting could remedy it.

yeah i know. i'm in south korea and it's just been really hard to find any good shops is all i can say.

+1. This isn't a $600 campy tool used only use once or twice a year. It's a $50 tool-the cost of a 10-speed cassette. Hell, I work in a Dick's Sporting Goods and they supplied me with one. I love using it because it's one factor I can control. While the bikes I build aren't Wal-mart Magnas, they aren't top of the line either-lots of plastic Tourney derailleurs. I use it on all new bike builds. Derailleur alignment is one factor I can control, and it's a factor all the other shifting setup steps are based on. It takes all of 30-seconds to use, and it saves the time and trouble of going through all the steps-limit screw setup, cable anchoring and tension adjustments, etc-only to find out you were fighting a losing battle from the start, doomed to failure before you even installed the rear wheel.

A bike shop that doesn't have one either-
1. Doesn't know about their existance
2. Doesn't care enough about proper shifting to invest in one

Well, you *can* make your own. The hardest part is finding a bolt (or preferably an all-thread rod) that will thread into the RD socket. The length of the beam is such that even a 1° deviation will be obvious. But if your time is valuable, the $60 or so for the tool is well spent (even though it's not my favorite tool from Park Tool).


Btw, please put your location in your Profile.

This sounds more like a mismatch between levers, RD and cassette-spacing than hanger alignment. Is this going UP the cluster to larger gears? What happens when you go down? Does it skip two gears and go from 7 to 5?

Your levers could be off by one click. Or you've got cable-friction.

Thanks for the input. Here's how it all went down. I bought a demo bike and had it shipped to me. I had the bike assembled and a the guy installing it took a couple of links out, he said my chain was too long. The bike rode and shifted great for a while. One day I accidentally shifted into the two largest gears and the chain was too short so it all locked up. so i took it back to the guys that assembled it and had my links put back on but the bike never shifted right again. I tried adjusting it and they tried for a long time.

Yes it was skipping middle gears shifting up or down. For instance I would shift from 5 to 6 but the chain would go to 7, the reverse would happen downshifting. It wasn't like sometimes either, it was every time I shifted. I bent the hanger by hand and thought i fixed it but it has malfunctioned like 2 times downshifting (but it stopped having problems going up in gears). It's the same kind of shifting problem just much less frequently. I need a fit on the bike anyway so I'm in the process of trying to find a good bike mechanic near Seoul that can look at it and give me a good fit. If anyone knows one let me know

From that descriptiion, I'd say there's about a 99.9% chance that, at the very least, the derailleur hanger is bent and that the bike is never going to shift well until you get it properly aligned. Good luck in finding a shop that can do it, but that's what you are going to need-

The guy who left the chain too short had no idea what he was doing. I wouldn't trust him with any further work on the bike.
Any shop should be able to tweek that hanger back into alignment, if that's your problem. This is not a complicated procedure.