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Derailleur Hangar

09.03.2013 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

Guest poster Don Blount deals with a small, but important, piece of equipment.

BlountOnBikingA derailleur hanger is a simple piece of equipment that attaches a rear derailleur to a bikes’s dropout. If it is a removable hanger, its job is to absorb impact during an accident or mechanical problem instead of damage being done to the bike’s frame.

dh1

This piece of equipment usually does not receive much attention until there is a problem with it, as happened to Ray about a year ago.

The derailleur on my five-year-old Scattante CFR Comp was the original. It had been bent a few times over the years but I had always managed to straighten it.

2But during a gear adjustment the mechanic mentioned that hanger had some cracks and should be replaced before the hanger fell apart completely.

Better the problem was found during an inspection while the bike was on a repair stand in a shop instead of on the road miles from home.

My bike is sold by Performance. I was able to find a new hanger on its website. Even better it was available in a local Performance store and cost less than $10. I bought two.

The side-by-side comparison of the new derailleur hanger on the left and old one on the right shows the cracks in the old derailleur.
The side-by-side comparison of the new derailleur hanger on the left and old one on the right shows the cracks in the old derailleur.

Replacement is also simple. Anyone somewhat handy can do it..

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Categories // Components, Maintenance Tags // derailleur, derailleur hanger

Back on the Bike — Sort Of

10.14.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 4 Comments

I thought I was out of the woods. After my derailleur hanger blew up last weekend, our club mechanic took a quick look at it and told me to order a new one from derailleurhanger.com. I did. They sent it out midweek, and the other day, I installed it on the bike.

So far, so good. It’s a simple job of screwing the new hanger in place. If you order the correct model, there’s no problem.

But when I tried to mount the derailleur to the hanger — problem.

What neither I nor the bike mechanic noticed was the extent of damage to the derailleur itself. I was less shocked to see the broken arm than I was to see that a large chunk of the jockey wheel was gone. I’m not sure if that happened when the hanger broke, or if it had been wearing away stealthily for a long time.

I hauled the bike back to the mechanic, and asked him to find a replacement and give me a call when everything was shipshape. He figured he could find one locally, and that it would cost about $100. Ouch.

But one of the benefits of being a semi-famous biking blogger surfaced the very next morning, when one of my readers emailed me to tell me he had a spare derailleur in his parts box. (I gotta get a parts box going myself.) Not only that, but he was generous enough to offer it to me gratis. I jumped at the offer. Maybe, by this time next week, I’ll be back on my own velocipede.

In the meantime, I still had to get some riding in. Saturday morning, my wife wanted to do her long ride of the week, and I took the mountain bike down from the hooks in the garage, pumped up the tires, and joined her. It’s not in the greatest shape, but it goes all right, if I can ever get used to the way the front suspension dives when I put on the brakes. I feel like I’m going to launch myself over the bars sometimes when I stop quickly.

That’s okay. On the return leg of our ride, I found myself behind two young lovelies at the stoplight just before HEB Hill. Now, this isn’t a steep hill, but it’s long enough to be a tester. I recalled being passed by mountain bikes going up the hill, and felt cocky enough to think that I might be the mountain bike doing the passing this time.

The light turned green. The young women pushed off slower than I expected, given the fact that they were a lot slimmer than I, and were on some decent road bikes — a Scott and a Bianchi. I stayed on their wheels up the hill, past the entrance to the supermarket parking lot, when I saw that I probably could pass them. But I didn’t. You’ve gotta know you’re racing to be in a race, right? They were chatting with each other while pedaling easily up the grade. I could feel myself starting to push hard just to stay with them. At the top of the hill, I crossed over to the left turn lane, and while doing so, drew even with them. They glanced my way, then kept on at their steady pace. No reason for them to care about another old fart on a bike, right?

It’s good that I have the mountain bike as a backup if I need it, but I prefer my road bike. That afternoon, I visited my friends Rick and Penny to once again borrow Rick’s titanium Airborne — the same one I had used several months ago. “The rear tire has a lot of miles on it,” Rick said. “You’ll want to keep an eye on it.” No big deal, and I was glad to have the option to ride a decent bike.

It rained Sunday morning, canceling our regular 8 a.m. club ride. But the skies cleared rapidly, and in another hour, the club president was posting a 10 a.m. start for those who didn’t mind riding on wet streets. I was among the first to show up.

The sun was shining brightly, but the streets weren’t drying as fast as they might have if the humidity hadn’t remained so high. We planned to head south to Buda, then across Interstate 35 into a rural area before heading back — perhaps 50 miles or so. As we pulled onto the bike lane along the major thoroughfare that runs past the coffee shop where we start our rides, I could see that the usual grit and gunk was heavy on the road surface after the rain. I made sure to keep the bike’s wheels pointed away from the trouble as we turned east.

But it was bound to happen. Pffffstt! I heard. “Flat!” I shouted, as I braked to a stop. The peloton zoomed ahead, but one rider, Rob, stopped along with me.

I was grateful that he did. Not because I can’t fix a flat — it’s one of the few bike maintenance tasks I can handle competently — but because my seatbag with the spare tube and the tire levers, along with my pump, was still on my own bike, which is ensconced in the bike mechanic’s garage. Rob gave me his spare tube, and the use of the mini-pump he carries. By the time things were back to normal, he was well behind the group.

“I’ll pedal like crazy and see if I can catch them,” he said. “If I can’t, well, I’ll have a nice ride of my own.”

He took off. I turned back the way I had come. It was just prudent to head home, rather than risk another flat. Anyway, I got a new personal best out of it — at about five miles, it’s the shortest club ride I’ve ever ridden.

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Categories // clubs, Components, Maintenance, tires Tags // derailleur, derailleur hanger, flat tire

Out of Commission

10.07.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 12 Comments

Riding Saturday morning in delightfully cool weather (Everything being relative — it was 63 degrees here [17C] — and that’s cool in Austin, Texas), I decided to push it a little bit. After an easy Mopac Loop with my wife, I dropped her off at home and continued on with my normal Saturday ride toward Convict Hill.

The cooler weather really helps. I wasn’t at all tired when I started to climb the hill (it’s not that steep, but a good test) and I pedaled harder than usual. When I reached the top, I found that I had done the climb two seconds faster than my previous best.

Buoyed by the good news, I crossed the hill to Wolf Creek Pass and took that drop down to Highway 290. Turnaround, and sprint up the hill. Well, sprint for about 25 yards. Then it was tough going as I pushed one gear higher than I have been on that hill. But I got to the top still feeling almost fresh, and less winded than I’ve been in the past. This was going to be a great ride.

I gained speed going down a residential side street and leaned hard into the corner at the bottom. Then it was a short coast to the rise at the end of the block, where I had a right turn. I shifted down two gears, saw there were no cars coming from the left, and stood on the pedals to turn onto the cross street.

Suddenly, a sharp metallic clunk sounded from the rear hub. Something clinked against my spokes. I stopped pedaling instantly, and the bike almost came to a complete halt.

In danger of tipping over in the middle of the street, I managed to clip out of the right pedal and slam my foot to the pavement. A glance back at the rear wheel revealed a sickening sight:

 

The derailleur hanger had snapped in two — clean break. I checked the spokes. Despite the contact, they hadn’t been harmed. But it was obvious I wasn’t going anywhere. The rear wheel wouldn’t turn.

I was only two miles from the house. I called my wife, and she grabbed the keys to the SUV and was on the scene in minutes.

Back at the house, I made an appointment by email to run the bike over to our club mechanic that evening. He took at quick look at it in his driveway, and said, “Derailleurhanger.com.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“No,” he replied, a little miffed at my disbelief. “Come here — I’ll show you.”

We went into the spare bedroom he uses as a workshop and he got online. Sure enough, there it was. He called up the make and model of my bike and showed me which hanger I should order. Not bad — $22 plus shipping.

“These replacement hangers are better than original equipment,” he said. “As you can see, the originals can break from riding. The replacements can break, but only from impact. They’re a tiny bit thicker than the originals.”

He pointed at his own bikes which hung from the walls in the room. “I’ve taken off the original hangers and put replacements on each of these,” he said. “They’re just better.”

He told me I would be able to swap out the hangers myself when the new one arrived. “It’s a five minute job,” he said. Okay, that means it’ll take me at least a half hour. I loaded my bike back into the SUV, and got his assurance that I could bring it back to him if I ran into trouble with the installation.

I ordered the replacement hanger online this morning, and got the confirmation email almost immediately. Then I sat back with another cup of coffee and watched the morning talk shows. No club ride for me today. No riding until the repair is done.

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Categories // Components, Maintenance Tags // derailleur, derailleur hanger

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