Derailers and rear cassettes

Civilian_Target

After years on hub gears, I'm back on derailers, and I'm struggling.

I have a Shimano Sora compact double, with a 50/34T crankset and a 26-12 rear cassette. I find this is a bit overgeared on the downhills, and a lot undergeared on the uphills.

It seems complicated and expensive to change the front crankset, so I guess the thing to do here is to change the rear cassette to something like a Shimano HG80 with 32 or 34 teeth, for extra power when climbing.

Do I need a long cage derailer to do that? Since there's no obvious long arm, I'm guessing I have a short cage one. And if that's the case, what are my options?


Also, things I have managed to **** up in the past month:

• Shifing up on the outer front ring, and then having to manually adjust the cables to get back down again
• Shifting down on the front ring, doing a quarter turn forward... and then a half turn back, so that my chain falls off at the traffic lights
• Shift down 3 gears at the back in one go while standing on the pedals... *crunch*
• Spend hours turning that damn barrel so that the indexing works right

gerardduff

Civilian_Target wrote: »

I have a Shimano Sora

I started with sora components. They were grand as I had nothing to compare them to and they made me learn how to tune a bike. They needed tweeking pretty much every time I got on.

If I was you I'd just try to get used to what I had. Maybe, after the some considerable use, consider swapping out the compact.

Shifting can be improved by having only small 'gaps' between gears but also on tuning and lubrication/cleaning chain etc. If you mess with the cassette you are limited by the indexing on the shifter = no. of gears (although I have heard of some inventive use of the limiting screws).

Probably slightly easier to change a cassette, but more things to consider.

ednwireland

i was messing with the barrel adjusters on my focus, it went out on a ride, didnt get time to look at it properly. when i did noticed the cables werent tight
worth checking put your rear deralliur on the small cog and make sure the cable is tight

same on the front small ring check cable is tight

unless the cables are tight when you start everything else is messing really

short circuit

Sora will suffice under most conditions ... I put 10000kms on a bike with Sora with no issues before I upgraded.

With a compact chainset ... you probably already have a long cage if not a medium cage derailer. Just measure the distance between the centre of the 2 jockey wheels. If more than 5cms, then you should be able to get atleast a 30 tooth cassette at the back. 32 might be pushing it, but doable ... if you take care not to run big-big or small-small combos ... but a bit tricky to setup with the B-screw to get good shifing.

Civilian_Target

Nah, I think I have the setup right at this point - it's a bit clunky but it goes to the right gear when asked now, and stays there. I figured that if I have 9-speed shifters I need a 9-speed casette, so that's what I'm looking at.

I'm no novice, I've been putting in a consistent 6000km a year since 2007, but on hub gears. So I don't think my legs are going to evolve that much... if it feels like I need a bigger gear, then it's better to get a bigger gear than screw my knees up trying to push something that's too small.

There's a 6cm gap between the centres of the two jockey wheels, but less than 2cm of a gap between the them, so maybe a 32 is possible then?
[EDIT]A quick image search shows you're right SC, medium cage[/EDIT]