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You’d think after all the fiascoes of yore, maybe I’d learn. Guess not.
The story unfolds with my observing that my rainy day commuting bike is shifting really poorly. This is not a case of the indexing being a bit off, since this bike doesn’t have indexing at all. Friction shifting always works, if it doesn’t shift, you just push it a bit farther. In this case, you had to push it about 2/3 of the entire travel to have it shift one gear. So finally annoyance overcame inertia and I looked into it. The reason for the problem was pretty apparent. What once were derailer pulleys had been reduced to mere stumps. Teeth were practically nonexistent, and the pulley had about 1/8 of an inch clearance between it and the bushing (it’s supposed to be zero). Fine, I’ll just replace the derailer. Of course, had I done that, this story would be over.
The last time I bought derailer pulleys, I discovered that they cost a good fraction of the price of a new derailer. But the derailer was a good one, and I found a couple of pulleys in my parts box, so ...
Some of you may realize that all pulleys are not created equal (size does indeed matter). One pulley went on without protest, but when I tightened the other one, it stopped turning. Seems said pulley was a bit too thick for this derailer. I determined that if I slacked off on the bolt holding it on, it would then turn. Now it occurred to me that bolts were meant to be tightened to really do their job of holding things together, and that a non-tight bolt could eventually become a disconnected bolt. But I felt lucky. Figured I’d give it a try, see what happened. And it worked like a charm, for about 10 miles.
My first clue that something was awry was that shifting was once again rather dodgy. It would shift fine in one direction but not the other. This was because the derailer bolt had come loose (quelle surprise), and instead of moving the chain, it was just bending the cage. Finally, it bent enough to force the chain past the pulley so that it was just sort of flopping around. This got my attention. The top pulley was now disconnected, but the bolt and pulley were still sort of hanging in there. So I rewrapped the chain, which involved twisting the cage, effectively loosening the other pulley to get it back on. I was feeling somewhat less lucky now, but I found a gear I liked and figured if I didn’t shift at all I could make it to work. Wrong.
After another mile the second pulley broke loose and pulleys, bolts, and the inner cage departed. At this point, I was closer to work, but still too far to walk (especially in cleats). Now the only thing keeping the chain on the cogs was gravity. This actually worked OK as long as I didn’t exert much pressure on the chain, which basically limited my climbing ability to about a 1% grade. Fortunately, it was pretty flat for the rest of the ride, and I made it to work. Got a ride home from Mrs. D, despite the embarrassment of crying uncle for a predicament I got myself in due to world class stupidity. I’d like to think I’ve learned my lesson, but I get the feeling we haven’t heard the last of these sagas.
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