On 6/7/2014 11:46 AM, Lou Holtman wrote:


True. At the end of this month we plan to cross the Alpes.
For that I mounted a 10 speed 12-30 cassette on my triple equipped bike.
Since this is at the edge of my medium caged RD I test rode it first
yesterday in the Dutch 'mountains'. I had to ride 110 km to get 1650
meters elevation gain but enough steep hills to test all my gears.
On the small chainring (30T) the three smallest cogs shift very sloppy.
On the big chainring the three largest cogs tend to overshift and at
one time the the chain fell of the big cog and went on again in a bumpy
corner. In the middle ring (42T) it all went well what makes this cassette
a real nice one on the flats. I can stay in the middle ring all the time
although 42/12 doesn't sound/feel nice.

Our most extreme chain angles happen on our Bike Fridays. Because of
the 20" wheels, we normally ride on the big chainring; otherwise we'd be
putting lots of wear on the tiniest rear cogs. And those special 9 and
10 tooth rear cogs feel pretty rough, anyway.

When downshifting for a hill, we could move to the middle chainring, and
often we do that. But from time to time, we'll be in the big ring and
the big rear cog. I think that's part of the reason the shifting is
sometimes not perfect. There have been times I've been glad to have
bar-end shifters with a friction option.

BTW, my wife's Friday was shifting badly last week. It appeared the
rear derailleur hanger was a bit bent, so I removed the derailleur and
straightened the hanger. Upon reassembly, I had to play with the "B"
screw quite a while to prevent the derailleur body from scraping on the
chainstay! (The chainstay and seatstay on these bikes is one tube, bent
into a sort of "U" shape.)

--
- Frank Krygowski