Did you just ShartQ?

give the RD a wiggle, they can develop quite a bit of play over time

mine wiggles alot but shifts precisely

how old is the cable and housing?

I observed this the other day, ( on a bunch of sram danglers) which actually proves my theory with the friction growtacs, its actually really hard to not do a clean sounding shift. There is a lot of scope for a chain to sit noiselessley on a sprocket.

If you’re comfortable doing a bleed I’d say do the rebuild. We do a few a year. It ends up feeling brand new.

Often all it really just needs the cap and bladder kit though.

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Thanks for the tip. I haven’t done a bleed ever, but I’m willing to take it on. Have a bleed kit in the mail and will tackle it next week

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is friction shifting better than indexed on a bent derailleur hanger? does friction shifting beyond 9 speeds suck?

perhaps, but I wouldn’t optimize for a deviation

more fiddly, it’s okay on ten, a nuanced challenge on eleven

Friction 11 is the best shifting system ever. It’s not fiddly and is super precise and predictable. ATMO, of course.

I’m using a 9 speed shimano bar end in friction mode on a knockoff thumbie mount and an 11 speed 105 dangler. I’ve also shifted friction 11 with a 9 speed XTR dangler and a $2 plastic sun race thumb shifter but that shifter sucked. I swapped it for a really really old campy dt shifter and it was much better.

I’ve heard this (ā€œfriction shifting doesn’t work well above 9 or 10 speedsā€) repeated so many times as fact and it does not reflect my, or others’, experiences at all.

Cog spacing for 10- and 11-speed cassettes is the same. The amount of shifter throw to move from one to the next is the same. The shifting experience is the same. The only difference is the 11-speed cassette is wider, so you have to have enough throw in the shifter to move the derailer a little bit further to make it across the whole cassette. That’s it!

I think this all originated from some well-meaning Riv employee who had never touched a 10- or 11-speed bicycle but heard things were scary and different, and spoke out of their ass.

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so i’m currently running an 11speed XT dangler on a bike without a replaceable hanger. i tried to straighten the hanger out the other day and it seems like it made the shifting worse all over, instead of just tricky in one or two gears in the middle. i was considering a switch to maybe a 10 or 11 speed friction thumbie instead… i’m worried that if i keep messing with the hanger it’ll eventually snap off and i’ll be bummed… but maybe that’s an unfounded fear

what material is the hanger? do you have an alignment tool?

I had friction 11s with a bar end shifter on my Evasion at one point, and it worked pretty well.

it’s a steel hanger, and yes i do. maybe i just need to try harder to align it better! shoulda done that before i installed the fenders

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merely sharing my own experience, I’m happy you’re happy with it

there’s a 0.17mm difference !!!

i didn’t like friction shifting on 8s, but it was probably the suntour microratchet barcons that everyone says are great but actually suck

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It works really well in 11-speed on my growtac shifters. I really feel that 12 speed would be just as good if not better. A chain has a natural tendency to want to hook up with a cassette sprocket. If I had two go-pros I would video it to show people that its not at all scary like people would imagine.

9 speed is the only place friction shifting sucks

and that’s mostly because 9s itself sucks, all tradeoffs with none of the upside of actual engineering developments that started with 10s and peaked with 11s

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You’ve said that for years, but I like 9s. Maybe just because it was what was popular when I started as a bike mechanic, but i still run it on my bikes without any issues.

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what does it mean when schwalbe is listing a tire at 28ā€ ?

is this a new thing for me to hate?

It’s the Socialist Hellhole way of saying 700c

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