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Derailer
NB: Originally posted elsewhere on the Global Riders Network and appears via syndication.
I have a SRAMX4 Derailer and chain has been changed twice now from wear.
Is it better to change to Shimano derailer and new shimano hg chain.
Is it worth changing over?I have read shimano chains are better than Sram.
Karen
[Mod. moved to MTB gear]
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Chain wear is a normal part of MTBing. Biggest causes of wearing chains prematurely are; lack of maintenance, riding everywhere in the granny ring and cross chaining big-big or small-small. If you try and ride with a straight chain line, spend the bare minimum of time in the granny ring, and keep your chain clean and lubed you'll get many hundreds if not thousands of Km's out of a chain.
There's no problem running a Shimano chain with a SRAM drive line in 8/9 speed. Just make sure to get the right chain for your gearing. A Shimano XT chain is almost bullet proof, treated with respect.
How many K's do you do, and how old is the bike? If you have replaced two chains due to stretch, then you may be due for a new rear cluster too. Once the sprockets wear to a certain point they'll kill a new chain in no time flat. Your LBS should be able to advise on what parts are due for replacement.
If shifting is becomming a problem either replacing the jockey wheels or the rear derailleur can have a marked improvement on performance. For regular off roading a SRAM X7 or Shimano SLX derailleur would be the minimum spec I'd recommend. The lower spec parts generally don't have the same level of sealing on the moving pivots and suffer accelerated wear. You can't mix brands of rear derailleur and shifter though, as the cables pull by a different amount for the same gear step.
HTH
8 or 9 speed on the rear cogset? Certainly for 9-speed, the XTR chain is better than the SRAM equivalent for service life, and my experience of SRAM 8-speed chain life on my first mtb was not very good.
SRAM shifters and Shimano rear derailleurs may not be compatible. A mate in Brisbane reliably informs me that they do work together despite marketing palaver saying they have different cable pull ratios. I'm planning to test the idea this weekend if this chest cold goes away, but in the meantime others hopefully may chip in with their experience.
Changing the derailleur will not have as much of an impact on improving your shifting as replacing the cassette at the same time. Whether this is necessary depends on how worn the chain is, and if a long way gone then the middle front chainring should be replaced as well. Given the number of chain changes, you are probably about due.
Welcome, and I hope this helps.
Shimano deraileur wont work with the SRAM shifter so you'd have to change both.
Hawkeyem it's definately not just marketing. SRAM Attack and Rocket shifters will match with shimano deraileurs but the X4-5-76-9-0_X
all pull 1:1 where shimano pull 1:2 so a shimano shifter will only move a SRAM deraileur halfway up the cassette.
As for whether it's worth changing.
At the lower end of the range (x4 vs alivio) SRAM seems the cheaper and nastier of the pair, At the upper end, anything over X7 I prefer SRAM, But then it all comes down to personal preference
That's what I thought, that's what I've always been told, but the mate in Brisbane who is an mtb newby reckons he's running Deore LX shifters with an X-9 rear derailleur with zero issues. He had an issue with the internals of the shifter sticking, but a spray of WD40 has fixed it and it's now back to working perfectly and getting all 9 gears, so he says - and he's not a space cadet. Hence I'm somewhat confused!
Have you tested this yourself to confirm? I've just assumed the statements were correct so there never seemed any point in needlessly trashing a shifter cable for a test that would fail.
Edit: just figured out how to do this without trashing a shifter cable. Watch this space.
I had a few bikes in where customers have purchased the wrong shifter/ deraileur combo off the net and could not get them to work together. Thinking about it it's only ever been Sram shifters/shimano deraileur so never tried the other way.
Can't see how it would work though as the index is set in the shifter. So one combo would shift the deraileur 2 cogs each click the other would shift the deraileur 1/2 a cog each click.
Let us know how the test goes
OK, I just measured how far the cable travels. Put a marker dot on the cable and measured how far it moved with a vernier caliper.
For SRAM X7 it moved 33.7mm give or take 0.1mm or so for all 9 gears.
For Shimano LX 9-speed dual control, it moved 21.7mm, again +/- 0.1mm or so.
So nowhere near twice the cable actuation, but more than enough difference to screw up shifting if you mix Shimano shifters with SRAM rear derailleurs and vice versa.