Gears starting to stick

joker77

Hi, bit of a noob so go easy

Looking for a bit of advice on what to be doing with the gears, maintenance I mean.

I bought a new Dawes Giro 200 (hybrid) back in January, which I was very happy with (compared to what I had been riding, a reject Argos MTB). I have a 6 mile each way commute to/from work, from Ballinteer into town.

I leave the gears on the highest chain ring at my feet (can't remember the proper name for it), and go up and down gears 1 to 8 depending on what kind of slope (usually 3 - 8 on the way into work, 1 to 5 on the way home).

The last couple of weeks, the gears are kind of sticking around the 4/5/6 mark - when I got the bike they'd click in straight away, now it takes a few seconds and sometimes to get to 5th say I'd put it up to 6th for a second and back down.

Is this bad for the bike? Why is it happening (especially so soon, only have the bike 4 months)? What can I do about it?

Thanks for any assistance

le-dub

No expert, but sounds like it needs a service. There are a couple of screws on the gear box on the rear wheel. I think the left is fow low and right is for high gears. I think your best of bringing to a bike shop, like Sean Duff or something, sounds very simple so should only take a 10minutes to fix.

You could always try a bit of 3 in1 oil on the chain, but unlikey to be the cause of the problem.

joker77

le-dub wrote:

No expert, but sounds like it needs a service. There are a couple of screws on the gear box on the rear wheel. I think the left is fow low and right is for high gears. I think your best of bringing to a bike shop, like Sean Duff or something, sounds very simple so should only take a 10minutes to fix.

You could always try a bit of 3 in1 oil on the chain, but unlikey to be the cause of the problem.

Cheers for that, thinking it could do with a service alright, and yes I had already dowsed it in 3-in-1 but didn't do a whole lot!

randomname2005

I leave the gears on the highest chain ring at my feet (can't remember the proper name for it), and go up and down gears 1 to 8 depending on what kind of slope (usually 3 - 8 on the way into work, 1 to 5 on the way home).

This isnt a good idea, you should try to use the middle or smallest chain ring (at your feet!) with the biggest cogs at the rear wheel.

As le-dub said the bike probably just needs a service, the cable could be a little loose, some dirt in the rederailleur or something like that. I wouldnt think its bad for the bike. It happens due to use! When you are changing gears the cable is under tension which may stretch it, and if you are cycling in rain then the chain and gears will pick up dirt which may cause the problem you are describing.
Hope that was of some help!
R

Johnny Jukebox

New cables will stretch and cause the derailleur to lose sharpness. They also
pick up dirt.

They just need to be tuned, maybe wipe the cables down.

Alkers

You should never be in the biggest chainring and the biggest cog!
Shift down on the big rings before you move the chain at the cassette.

joker77

Simona1986 wrote:

You should never be in the biggest chainring and the biggest cog!
Shift down on the big rings before you move the chain at the cassette.

Ok, knew I was kind of doing this wrong, but as I say I could do with a lesson on how to use the gears properly! Could you explain this a bit better or point me along the way?

t5pwr

Sometimes the cables get dirty and rusted as well and they don't move as freely in the tubing that they run through!!! So it takes a bit of time before the cable releases fully and then the gears slowly move into place when changing from say 4th to 5th.

rob1891

joker77 wrote:

Ok, knew I was kind of doing this wrong, but as I say I could do with a lesson on how to use the gears properly! Could you explain this a bit better or point me along the way?

If your gears at the rear are 1 being smallest to 8 being biggest, you 'should' run through them in the following way:

front : rear
big : 1
big : 2
big : 3
big : 4
middle : 2
middle : 3
middle : 4
middle : 5
middle : 6
small : 4
small : 5
small : 6
small : 7
small : 8

The idea is to have the smallest jump in difficulty between each gear and to minimise the amount the chain has two twist (when it is in the big : 8 it is twisted a lot). Of course you can see here there are times when you need to down shift twice on the back and once on the front, that sucks and I never do it myself because the chain will make horrible noises and you won't get a smooth shift. Down once on front and back at the same time works fine though.

Here is a table with the difficulty of each gear, higher is tougher:



The front gears are across the top and rear gears go downwards. I've choose common gear sizes, 44:32:22 at the front and a 12-32 8speed at the back. If you want to go counting the teeth on your gears you can create your own table here:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/


Now, bet you weren't expecting gears to be so complicated :-P

joker77

rob1891 wrote:

Now, bet you weren't expecting gears to be so complicated :-P

Yea I sort of was, half-afraid to ask though because I didn't want to hear the answer!

Cheers though rob, will hopefully start cycling now in a way that will treat the bike a bit better!

joker77

My own gears are numbered 1-3 and 1-8 with 1-1 being easiest and 3-8 being toughest, so what you're saying when moving from easy to difficult is:

1-1
1-2
1-3
1-4
1-5
2-3
2-4
2-5
2-6
2-7
3-5
3-6
3-7
3-8

This look right?

rob1891

ok, that looks fine, I've just reversed things on you.