SRAM Red front derailleur problem

Come on, it always works nicely in the stand!

This is true. I get mine to work is the stand then five miles into the ride it won't move onto the big ring.

lol .. yes .. but the Sram Red front mech has a Max capacity of 16T ie using 34 50 the mech is at it's limits. Using the gearing I've chucked on I need a capacity of 10 so the theory is it can handle the shift easier ..

cough wouldn't happen with campagnolo

..there, said it...

feel free to ignore this

but you would need thumbs you can dislocate

so just buy shimano (apart from sora, their groupset where they demonstrate quite how shit thumb shifters are)

Oswald is the 16T thing common to all SRAM front mechs?

My front is a Force, interested if it's on the limit of its capacity.

Anyway, I'll fix it, but if it does it again and I have the money that'll be it's last offence.

@ rive gauche .. I'd be on Campagnolo if it weren't for the lever shape and my hands .. bring back the 10 speed lever shape!

@ Dammit .. Rival, Force and Red are 16T .. if you look at the them side by side the basic design is identical only the details and materials change. Campagnolo and Shimano are also 16T capacity .. My thoughts are Sram didn't nail the front mech design!

I had a few problems with my red front mech like what you describe until i got annoyed and bought a force one, steel rather than ti. No problems and 1500 training and racing miles later its still sweet.

Thanks for all your replies. My mechanic friends are going to install a Force fd today, as they're horrified by the idea of mixing SRAM and Shimano. I'll lett
You know how I get on. If it don't work straight away I'm going for Dura Ace. Then hopefully I can stop messing' with the bike and get on with riding it!

[Update: The workshop owner is on the Dura Acve side of the argument, so DA it is!
Will update with news of how it works once the change is made]

Hope it works for you .. nothing worse then messing around when you could be riding!

Just had the Dura-Ace front derailleur fitted and first indication are that the problem is fixed. Shifting seems good on the first short ride.
Will have a longer test when I get a break from the Olympics.

Longer test complete. Firstly, should have mentioned before that I have a couple of shortened (middle two) fingers on my left hand as a result of an injury at work, so shifting with the left hand isn't as easy as it should be. Anyway, a twenty five miler with plenty of shifting showed a big improvement from the sram red front derailleur days. I unshipped the chain once with an over-enthusiastic sweep, but by and large the shifting was pretty good using the Dura-Ace shifter. Will stick with it and see how it settles in.

cough wouldn't happen with campagnolo

True, that's why I have a Campag Record CT FD on my bike :-) Although I have a 105 (FD-5600) on the other, and that works too. As did the SRAM Rival I had before upgrading to the Campag. All using SRAM Doubletap shifters and Campag CT chainsets, Record 34/48 on the good bike and Mirage 34/50 on the beater.

As an aside, the problem with Red front shifting wasn't just about the dérailleur; at least half the problem with the first generation of Red was that the outer ring wasn't very stiff, so it tended to bend away from the dérailleur as the chain pushed on it during upshifts. The outer rings got stiffer (and heavier) on the next iteration (before the complete revamp of 2012) to solve this. I expect the problem was worse with compacts, as 50t/110mm pcd has the chain roller pcd 10% further from its mounting points than 53t/130mm pcd

Can anyone help me sort my rival front mech shifting sometime tomorrow in E14?

chiz.

make sure you have the derailleur the right distance from the chainring, other than that it's pretty hard to get it set up wrong.

I have not got a clue when it comes to gears sadly.

SRAM Red YAW front mech: a little help please? Not done this before. Indexed the rear ok I think. Tinkered with the front a bit and now it won't shift from big to small, plus I think it's not completely angled correctly. The adjustments I can see are: High and low limit screws, the whole thing up / down and tilting the angle, cable stop on the mech, and cable adjuster near the bars.

This is a good a guide as any.
http://www.artscyclery.com/learningcenter/shimanomechroadfrontderailleurs.html

I think it's different because of the Yaw thing. Have got their YouTube vid and the official SRAM one so will try them. Thanks.

Just tried following the videos for about 5 hours. Worse than I started with. Plus frayed cable. Fuck this.

Sounds like a job for lbs.

Setting up front mechs I quite enjoy doing, perverse, but then I also enjoy going to the dentist ;)

The height and twist are critical, rule of thumb you want it parallel with top chainring and half a chain plates height from the top of the tooth to the first part of cagE. Then ststart worrying about cables.
Sometimes you get lucky and get them right first time, others take a good 15 mins of fettling until they are perfect.

Yep, even with those correct, I'm having issues with the high and low limit screws and cable tension. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Got a new pack of Gore RideOn cables so might use one and start fresh. Want to take it to a bike shop in Oxford which will let me watch how to do it, but most won't. And forget places like London Bike Kitchen.

@spotter solved issues with yaw using a shim that goes between the dérailleur clamp and dérailleur. You might need one.

Have a look in his System Six thread for deets.

Mmm it was working ok for a while so shouldn't need shims or anything. CAAD10 frame.

Called up some bike shops but they're busy or closed today, so want to try and fix this myself and be a grown up and stuff.

So it's a CAAD10 frame, with Exogram chainset and SRAM Red YAW front mech, Force rear. Was working all fine before, but when I was in the big ring at the front and small cog at the back, I'd get some rubbing. Indexed the rear fine, and now the front is in pieces.

I've followed the steps in this video up until 2:55, but when I get to that point (it's been lined up and rotated, cable attached, limit screw turned so large cog doesn't rub etc), and it's set up on the smaller ring at the front, the shifter wont move the mech back up to the large chainring. It hardly moved at all when I push the lever in at the bars, but the weird thing is it feels like there's a decent amount of resistance - it's quite hard to push. Any ideas mechanical people? Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnG3t7TyRm0