At the end of my rope. Bought this Bianchi a few years ago from the original owner. Doing som maintenance on it now and trying to fix the an issue I've had with the shifting since I got it.
I cannot for the life of me tune the rear derailleur to a point where it shifts consistently and smoothly. Shifting up to the bigger cogs is not really a problem, but it's hesitant to shift back to the smaller cogs on the way down.
I've chained the chain, cleaned to cogs, replace cables and housing, adjusted limiter screws and barrels as much as I can, with no avail.
Only things I can think now is it's a bent hanger, I need to do something with the cage tension screw (?), or the shifter in the hoods is messed up in some way.
Does anyone have any idea where I can go from here?
Pics:
1. Idk if this hanger is bent, but unsure.
2. Is this chain too tight? Ive used a few methods to eye ball it, so I don't think so, but looking for second opinions.
3. What effects can I really look out for by messing with this tension screw?
Thanks in advance for any help
by jharden77441
9 Comments
Hanger looks a little bent to me
If in doubt, blame the derailleur hanger. Buy the tool and check it. Or go to your LBS, but I’ve never regretted buying the tool.
Hi, I see you have a Campagnolo derailleur, so I assume you have the Campa shifters as well. Is your cassette also Campa? It is almost compatible with Shimano but not exactly. I used to have these kind of problems with shifting when I had a Shimano cassette on my Campa bike.
Hanger is pretty clearly bent. You can see the derailleur cage doesn’t sit in a parallel plane to the cogs. Stick an Allen into the bolt that hold the derailleur to the hanger and gently bend upward realigning the hanger
Angle of derailleur looks off from that pic. Hard to say for certain but this is usually because hanger is bent.
The hanger is intended to deform or break to prevent damage to frame or derailleur in case of impact.
Try the derailleur tension screw. Helped me out when I rode Campagnolo. Have fun!
Hanger looks bent. If you don’t have a proper alignment tool I would just take it to the shop. It’s an really easy job for them.
My kid ride mtb and his (and my) hanger gets bend every now and then and I used to just use a allenkey as someone has mentioned. I’m my experience it’s just doesn’t work because rhe hanger can bend in every direction and eyeballing it can be hard with the low tolerance some hanger has
The symptoms are classic bent derailleur hanger.
Others have beat the hanger to death, definitely check it before anything else below.
I’ve found a lot of shifting issues w/ an out-of-tolerance B screw adjustment. I’ll assume you’ve cleaned and lubed (not WD-40) all the joints and pivots in the derailleur, I need to do that before everything cakes up after the wet season but yours is quite shiny and clean. Lastly, remember up is controlled by the cable tension, and down is controlled by the spring tension in the derailleur; so it may, in very rare instances, be a weak spring or other out of tolerance component in the derailleur itself causing it to bind up a little.
[https://www.parktool.com/en-us/blog/repair-help/rear-derailleur-adjustment](https://www.parktool.com/en-us/blog/repair-help/rear-derailleur-adjustment)