Helping my nephew with his new bike. He dropped the chain on the spokes, so I checked it out. Reset the high and low limit screws to prevent the chain from dropping. Tightened the b screw to get a tad more pulley clearance. Fine tuned the barrel adjuster to reduce chatter. Gears 12-9 work pretty good, but it gets chattery on the lower gears. I’m looking at the gap when in first gear. Is this normal? Bike has a month of riding, and chain checker says it’s good.
by cjd3
3 Comments
Did you check hanger alignment?
Is the biggest cog cracked at the 8:00 position?
I think that gap is normal.
It’s also possible the derailleur lower cage is misaligned with the parallelogram. On my previous derailleur i struggled a lot with trying to get all gears shifting well, and no matter what, some gear in the middle was always problematic. This was after some lower cage hits and having the chain jammed in the spokes one time(limit screw wasn’t properly set up). When the derailleur eventually broke because of a twig that got jammed and i got a new derailleur, shifting got 100% crisp again.
If the chain takes an abnormal amount of rotations to exit the largest cog, i think it’s a sign that the lower cage is bent towards the wheel. My lbs said i could try bend it back by hand, but i never got around to do it because i was afraid i could make it worse.