Bent Derailleur Replacement

qwerty567111
qwerty567111 Posts: 7
edited June 2013 in MTB beginners
Hi all,

First off all I would like to apologise if this thread should be in the MTB Buying Advice section but I'm also a beginner so I thought I'd get more relevant help here.

My problem is that I've inherited an old bike (my first bike though) from my elder brother (an 18-speed Raleigh T-Bolt, nothing special :P ) which had a forever skipping chain. I already replaced the freewheel (to a Shimano MF-TZ20) which actually had broken teeth and subsequently replaced the chain too.

After doing some research and finding out about the limit screws and barrel adjuster, I played around with the settings to try and get smooth gear changes, I've got most of them sorted except that I cannot get back down to gear 1 on the rear wheel no matter what gear is engaged at the front. When I manually put the chain into the 1st gear it just rides horribly and also the derailleur hits my wheel spokes (adjusting the limit screws stops this but then the chain misaligns itself).

I compared my derailleur to my friend's as he has the same one and it seems as if mine is bent and that's why 1st gear doesn't align. Is there any more that I can do for it without replacing it or should I just change it?

My derailleur is a Shimano RD-TY18 and I cannot seem to find an affordable replacement of the same model on UK sites, I'm not going to pay the shipping fees if I purchase from american stores so what is a suitable replacement? Would the Shimano Tourney RD-TX35 work fine or not?

Another quickfire question, am I ok to replace the SRAM gripshifter gear shifters (mine are very stiff) to the Shimano Revoshift models? (I'd prefer brand continuity, its affordable too).

Thanks for bearing with such a long first post, I appreciate any help.

Anil

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