Front mech on a 50 40 30 mtb top pull
 

I have an issue with fitting a front mech on my mtb frame. I have a 50 40 30 chainring setup on race face mtb cranks for road use but I have had to stand off the drive crank by 5mm to clear the frame.
A shimano road triple mech only moves 12mm outward and cannot reach the outer ring. A shimano Mtb triple mech moves 17mm and can reach but the chain doesn't line up with the grooves on the inner plate and it gets jammed.
Ideally I need a mtb mech with a road cage. I have a 9spd setup on sl-r660 shifters

I have considered the SRAM 3.0 but it says its for 7/8 spd setups, would this make any difference?

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Justin

Maybe a FD-R453 braze-on type with a tandem specific braze-on adapter.

Edit: the R453 doesn't support 50/40/30 but it will work with 50/39/30

you can open up the front derailleur options with a re direction pulley below the front derailleur and then use a bottom pull FD.
although the cable comes from the top .

Problem Solvers


I used a Campag Triomphe Liesure FD , & bar end shifters with my <C>50-40-(30)24//

Try setting the height of the FD (is it an FM in the UK?) basing it on the ramp position vs the middle ring, rather than the outer ring. That may solve the problem. Otherwise you might try a road triple, but there might be issues of cable response ratio. (I hate index front).

I started a winter project a couiple of years ago. I converted a Trek 930 mtb bike to a drop bar winter bike, using a triple crank, tiagra triple FD, and Shifters, (9 speed). To get the road FD to work, I drilled a small hole underneath the BB shell, attached a cable guide. Front shifting was perfect (50/39/30). It took a few trys to find the correct length bottom bracket with the Sugino AT crank, but after that, shifiing was excellent

All sorted now, I had to move the drive crank closer to the frame and I bought the SRAM 3.0 dual pull front mech which has flat plates. It's cheap heavy and ugly but it works and recommended if you have a custom chainset. I bought the problem solvers pulley adapter but the pulley wheel is too small and puts a unsuitable bend radius on the cable resulting in extremely stiff shifting - not what you want when you've just fitted the XTR PTFE cableset!