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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

The Saga of the Broken Derailleur

03.29.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

Guest poster Don Blount has been dealing with a frustrating situation.

It is never comforting to show a mechanic or an experienced cyclist a broken bike part and hear them respond: “Oh wow, I have never seen that one before.”

I received that response several times when I told people of my bike’s broken front derailleur. (Click photos to enlarge.)

It did not make any unusual noises before it broke. Nor did it go out with a clang. It just went. One moment I was pedaling and attempting to shift into the big ring and there was no shift. I looked down and saw the now oddly shaped derailleur.

I could not fully assess the damage on the road, so I cut my ride short and returned home. I called a few bike shops and found one that said they had the part in stock.

The next day, Saturday, I stopped by that shop only to discover they did not have the style of derailleur I needed. My Scattante CFR Comp uses a clamp-on derailleur, like the name indicates the derailleur clamps onto the seat tube of the bike.

There is also the braze-on derailleur, which attaches by fasteners directly to the frame. They too would have to order the part or I could pay an additional $15 or so to buy an adapter to fit the braze on derailleur to my bike. Nah, I passed on that.

At home I removed the chain, removed the derailleur and cleaned my bike. After everything was reassembled I realized there was no reason I couldn’t continue to ride the bike provided the course was relatively flat as I could not shift from the small ring to the big ring.

Sunday night I ordered the replacement part ($60), upgrading from a Shimano 105 to a Shimano Ultegra. That same day, I rode 22 miles and the bike handled just fine. Until the new one is installed I will continue to get in rides as long as I remember to not attempt to shift the front rings.

The new derailleur is here.

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Categories // Components, Maintenance Tags // derailleur

Sometimes it’s not what it seems

08.30.2009 by Ray Niekamp // 7 Comments

I showed up for the Sunday morning B ride feeling somewhat apprehensive. The rear tire on my bike had a noticeable warp. It wasn’t really a bulge, but the main tread of the tire got off center at one spot. I was worried it might fail during the ride.

I put the bad tire on the bike last weekend, after I got a flukey flat. A screw had punctured the tire — maybe you saw the picture I linked to from my Twitter account. Anyhow, that tire was no longer usable, but I happened to have an older one hanging in the garage, so I put that on as a quick replacement.

It worked all right, but not great. I could feel the warp when the tire rolled, and Saturday I had to stop to re-center the rear brake, which turned out to be rubbing at one spot on the wheel. But I completed last Sunday’s group ride, and rides on Friday and Saturday with no other problems, so I thought I’d take  chance on the tire one more day.

About 10 miles into the ride, my friend David ran over a radial tire wire in the road, and it stuck into his tire. He pulled it out, but warned us all that he might be stopping to tend to a flat down the road. The two of us rode more or less together from then on.

Southwest of the small town of Buda, right after turning onto a busy two-lane highway, I felt something give on my bike. Suddenly, I couldn’t shift anymore, although I could pedal all right in the small chainring. David stopped with me, and Scott turned around to join us while the rest of group continued on. Last week, Scott broke a shift cable on our ride, and rode 15 miles on only three gears through some hilly terrain. Our first thought was that I had a snapped cable, too.

The rear tire rubbed against the front derailleur at one spot, and we couldn’t fix that. David, the most adept tinkerer of the three of us, played with the shifters while I held the rear wheel off the ground. He confirmed that the problem was a broken cable. I decided to turn around and head back to Buda, about three miles away, and have my wife perform sag duties from there.

One of our club members, who was riding with the A group this morning, is an expert bike mechanic. I contacted him after my wife got me home, and he told me to bring the bike over. He glanced at it when I pulled it from the back of the SUV, and said, “You’ve got a broken front derailleur.”

We put the bike up on a repair stand in his workshop, and he checked it over thoroughly. I mentioned that we had all diagnosed the problem as a snapped cable. He disagreed. He didn’t stock a replacement derailleur, and sent me out to get one. The local Performance store had what I was looking for — an Ultegra, on sale (the broken was a Tiagra). I bought it and took it back to his shop. He had it on and working perfectly in 10 minutes.

“Your cables are fine,” he said. “I checked them out carefully while you were gone.”

He adjusted the trim of the shifters as precisely as possible, and charged a whopping five dollars for his trouble. “The good news is, this replacement derailleur you bought is more solid than the other,” he said. “You should never run into the same problem with this one as you did today.”

I thanked him for his work and loaded my bike back into the SUV. As always, a trip to bike shop racked up more expenses than I’d planned on — the derailleur and a new tire, plus some stuff came to a round $100. But the bike is running again, which it wouldn’t be if I’d stuck to the original assumption about what was wrong.

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Categories // Components, Maintenance Tags // derailleur, repairs

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