rear shifting is sending me mad

slindborg

Long time no see

I have a (boggo basement spec ) Norco Charger 9.2 from 2013 and the indexing on the rear is getting mega irritating. Its a 3x9 setup, an XT front mech and Alvin and the chipmunks rear mech

I have changed the chain before the park tester said to, I have changed the cables and kept the same lengths of outers.
I have set the high and low stops properly and setup the cable as per the myriad of youtube vids....
When indexing up and down the full tance 9/10 times its fine. But changing between 3/4 5/6 7/8 etc it doesn't always go and needs an extra push on the shifter or to drop an extra gear and go back up.
In the higher gears (smaller rear cogs.... just checking) it sometimes jumps when under load which is hateful.
The behaviours are the same in all three front rings, yes I know about the cross chaining lark, which makes me think its not work rings.

Is this going to be the cassette or the hanger or the mech or the shifter, or a combo of the above?

If its anything other than the hanger I will work out a way to man maths in a 1x10 conversion

cooldad

slindborg wrote:

Is this going to be the cassette or the hanger or the mech or the shifter, or a combo of the above?

Yes.

cooldad

Assume when you say you kept the same lengths of outers, you changed them for new? Or kept the old outers?

slindborg

Changed the outers AND inners, but the shifting was being irritating before I changed the cables but had a new chain.

I'll grab a new hanger and then if its still bad, look at a 1x10 then
I cant see anything wrong with the mech or the hanger as everything is straight at the extremes etc, but underload I guess if could be bending around.

nicklouse

read the set up info on park tools most of the video ones are crap.

if you still have issues post up clear pics of the rear mech from the rear in a middle cog. looking down the bike back to front.

slindborg

I've followed just about all the setup guides and get the same upper/lower limts and then tension fiddling to get the indexing to "work" (managed it on a couple of bikes before too). But have also used the park guides and same result. I'll grab a pic later/tomorrow.

I've a feeling the pikey spec mech and shifters are getting tired after a measly 600miles... yes in 2 years... yes I'm rubbish.

Chunkers1980

what mech is it, specifically, as your description means nothing. Is it mega9?

slindborg

shifter: Shimano Alivio SL-M430 9spd
Mech: Shimano Alivio RD-M430 9spd
cassette: Shimano CS-HG20 11/34 9spd

Ouija

slindborg wrote:

Mech: Shimano Alivio RD-M430 9spd

I found that mech to be just terrible and could never get it to work properly on the two bikes i fitted it to. Actually went back to the 8/9 speed earlier version of the mech (after trying the new DEORE.. also not great). Like you i went through the whole replacing every thing else except the mech. Even now, those newer Alivio and Deore mechs don't work well on whichever bike i try them out on (reluctant to throw them away since they are reasonably new).

slindborg

I did have a thought to try the 8spd kit from the other bike in the shed to see which bits were naffed.
so Deore isn't much cop either? I thought that was supposed to be the bare minimum.....

The Rookie

Check the jockey wheel bearings, my commuter started playing up and I found the upper jockey wheel bearing was so FUBAR the wheel was tilting and aligning with whatever of 2-3 gears it felt like. Mind that had done over 4000 miles.

Ouija

slindborg wrote:

I did have a thought to try the 8spd kit from the other bike in the shed to see which bits were naffed.
so Deore isn't much cop either? I thought that was supposed to be the bare minimum.....

Depends which Deore, just like the Alivio's. They keep changing the designs every couple of years. The old Alivio M410 works great (gone through about 4 on various 8 and 9 speed bikes) the only problem being with the largest size cassette it will take (about 32 if you extend the b-screw all the way in). The older 8/9 speed Deore was pretty rock solid too, but the newer M591 suffers from exactly the same flaky shifting as the newly redesigned Alivio.

I can, and have, literally taken my old M410 off my bike and put back the newer Deore and Alivio on it and instantly get problems with shifting in some gears no matter how much fiddling with the indexing you do. Slap any of my other used derailleurs (i have a box of about 15) on there and the problem instantly dissappears which suggests the problem is with the mechs and not the cabling. I also use Avid rollermajigs on some of my bikes to turn my cheaper mechs into straight pull designs (wish they still made these) that eliminate cable binding but still get inconsistent shifting on the redesigned Alivio (M430) and Deore (M591).

slindborg

rightecokey skip.

Seems that to get away from Deore without spending a fortune its SLX or Zee (well my poor man maths skills puts a new 9spd mech into a project to convert to 1x10 ), any suggestions which to aim at or are both fine enough for lazy XC use.

The Rookie

Or get an older Deore as mentioned....or older any rear mech, an LX or XT can be had in VGC for about £15.

slindborg

The Rookie wrote:

Or get an older Deore as mentioned....or older any rear mech, an LX or XT can be had in VGC for about £15.

Ebay I assume? (urghhhh )

cooldad

I don't like Shadow mechs, just seem floppy to me, so I replaced with older (new) pre Shadow ones. For me better and cheaper, but there again I do have ancient 200GS, Alivio and STX RC that still work fine, so maybe I'm not that picky.

The Rookie

The Tourney on my hack bike works fine as well!

slindborg

for reference, I dragged it out on Friday evening and had a looksee at the rear mech.
the top jockey wheel was all over the place as per the comment above... Could get about 2.5 gears from a single location

I've managed to get hold of all the kit (bar chain) for a 1x10 conversion with range extender so hopefully that'll be the end of random shifting, and the start of me being even worse up hills

loudog

If you swapped the chain and then problems started occurring, did you put the chain on the right way round?

Shimano chains are supposed to have the engraving on the outside. I never would have believed/thought that it mattered, but apparently it does

slindborg

It was an SRAM chain, same model as the bike came with.
The issues were there before I added the new chain, but I didn't think much of it as the transmission was getting a little tired despite not doing much milage.

Now have an X9 mech + shifter, Raceface NW chainring and SRAM cassette with hope 40 expander. that's some man maths

The Rookie

It was my X9 that failed like that, the upper wheel cartridge bearing was really badly worn (lower bushed wheel was fine - but I had been servicing that), it was bought used and had done about 4500 miles on my bike by then, so I'd hardly say it was prone to failure. Now using some BBB Rollerboys.