Gear set up

pauldavid

Excuse my general ignorance as I am still very much a newbie.

I have recently bought a Giant Defy 3.5 which has a triple set up.

My question is;

Should I be able to use all gear ratios in all 3 front rings.

At the moment the 3 lowest ratios are unusable in the largest ring due to the chain dragging significantly on the fron mech. This problem also occurs to varying degrees when using the middle and smallest ring.

I have asked the LBS that I bought the bike from about the issue and feel I've been fobbed when they said "they all do that"

Any advice gratefully received.

-steves-

You theoretically could use all the gears, but from what I have read on here, you don't use the opposite back 2 or 3 gears from the front one you are on as it can quickly stretch the chain. So on the little front gear, you generally wouldn't use the small gears on the back and on the large gear at the front, you generally wouldn't use the large gears on the back.

However, if its dragging that bad in all of them, it sounds to me (another newbie) that it may not be setup correctly. I know on my bike, I have small adjustments that can be made to stop just that by some a "half gear" like movement on the left shifter, and no I dont know the special name for it, but it stops any rubbing but doesn't change the front gear.

I am sure other wll chirp in with more useful and informative replies

mrwibble

Google Cross Chaining

Speedo_King

They all do that.

Why would you want to do what you're doing anyway, that's the point of gears, if you are on the large chainring and want to make it easier, there comes a point when you need to change into the middle chainring rather than trying to force it all the way up the cassette.

As steves says above, you should be able to 'trim' the front derailleur by pressing gently on the lever. This will result in a soft click which knocks the derailleur over by a notch.

I presume you're running Shimano.

kamil1891

You can adjust your front mech by just moving the bolts either way (lots of videos how to do this on a youtube) and see whether the chain still hits the mech. Like steve have said you shouldn't use the extreme opposite cogs, but you should use the smaller front with the bigger rear cogs and bigger front with the smaller at the rear Hope I have helped a bit (I am newbie too)

pauldavid

Thanks for your replies.

I will take a look at the adjustment videos suggested and see if that helps, although from some of the replies it sounds like it may just be me not knowing what the flip I am doing yet :oops: