Alright, well speaking of singlespeed...I had a no speed on the way down to the shop today. I noticed my chain doing some crazy shifting on the way back from class (about a mile). So, I figure I'll ride it down to the shop and do a good job of fixing it up. I across the street and all hell breaks loose, almost literally. So the two pieces of metal that hold the jockey wheels ripped off from the rest of the dérailleur, the chain snapped, the body of the dérailleur which was still attached to the frame was twisted up and pointing at me. Ended up bending the hanger, putting my wheel out of true(somehow) and breaking that plastic guard between the spokes and the low gear. So I have a hanger on order and now I'm deciding if I want to put an lx or an xt on there. It came stock with an lx, a friend of mine gave me the xt that ripped apart (he said it came off his dad's Santa Cruz, which he'd upgraded to full-on xtr, which is all true, I've seen the bike, I know his dad, he didn't swap me knowing it was crap). So now I am in for a new dérailleur, hangar and possibly a chain. And I was trying to save some money for some disc brakes and a new bike...geez.

(you like those accents, they are courtesy of that ieSpell (it capitalized the "S" too) maelstrom recommended)

It sounds like it wasn't adjusted right to begin with, or your derailleur hanger was messed up to begin with... hence the bad shifting. Did the derailleur go into the spokes? If your hanger was bent in, its a good possibility.

I have no idea, what actually happened. I heard all kinds of noise, and then the pedalling was loose (the chain broke). I looked down and was like what the ****?

Just one hanger????

Order more than one derailleur hanger. It's bound to happen again in the future.

How did you put an ' above the e in your title? Seriously. Thats cool.

I thought so too, that ieSpell program said I spelled it wrong and that's how it got replaced.

More than one hangar, that's genius. Now if only I wasn't so cheap...

Ahem
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/derailer.html

well hmm, screw the spell check, I never mispell words anyway...

Did you mean something like this happened?

Yea, that happened to me on sunday when my derailuer deicided to hold hands with the spokes. Oh well, its a good excuse to upgrade to sram x7

edit: Im currentlly running my bike without a derailuer sort of like a single speed. I was surprised how much quiter and freerer the drivetrain is without the drag of the derailuer. And to make the little é accent, just go into microsoft word and hit ctrl quote then e the paste it in here. č would be the tilda key and ç would be comma and c if you wanted to know for some odd reason

i'm surprised anyone actually goes through the effort of spelling "derailleur" properly, let alone the funky e.

Here's what happens...

Derailleur hanger starts out vertical. Derailleur set screws are set so that the upper jockey pulley stops under the smallest cog in the cassette at one extreme, under the large cog at the other extreme.

Man with bike hits tree.

Derailleur hanger bent inward.

Derailleur now stops under the second smallest cog at one extreme and beyond the largest cog at the other extreme (which is now into the spokes somewhere).

Wheel is rotating, derailleur dives into spokes, rips off derailleur hanger. Rinse, wipe hands, repeat.

Repair or replace the derailleur hanger when you first notice it ain't vertical anymore and before it costs you a derailleur, a wheel and a hanger.

Yeah, that's alot like what it looked like, except my derailleur body was facing up...but whatever. So back to the real question at hand. Is xt worth the extra money? I'm sticking with shimano...

Having a Hungarian keyboard is to my advantage here. öüóúőáéű

Just hold down alt key while you type 233 on the Num Pad, that should give you this é.

éΘΘΘ cant get man