I had another crack at a race with a particularly brutal finishing climb on Saturday (the Stratford-Dargo classic, check out the video here).
Having had to walk the final wall last year (even with a 34-28), I did two things - trained very hard, and bought what I thought was the right componentry to allow the Shimano drivetrain on my Giant TCR Advanced to shift a 34-32. I ended up with a Deore LX rear derailleur fitted with 10-speed jockey wheels, a SRAM 12-32 rear cassette, and a brand-new Dura-Ace chain (which they presumably joined at the right length), all to be shifted by Dura-Ace 7800 levers. The LBS fitted up, and thought it would work fine. It seemed to be shifting fine in (low-effort) testing.
13 km into the race, I got up out of the saddle for the first hard effort of the day. I wasn't doing anything silly like using 50-32, nor did I touch wheels. But somehow, the rear derailleur and chain ended up in the wheel, the hangar snapped clean in half. The end result - me flung over the handlebars and on the side of the road, to be picked up by the sag wagon (luckily, damage to me was limited to minor road rash).
The damage can be seen here, though I'm not sure it helps in the diagnosis much.
The undamaged setup can be seen here.
To my knowledge the derailleur hanger had not been damaged previously.
With all the preliminaries out of the way, and note that I'm *not* looking to scapegoat my LBS, who have looked after me well...
Does anybody see any obvious reason why this setup failed so spectacularly, except for the bad karma of mixing 404s with such ridiculously low gearing?
Has anybody got a similar setup to work, and if so were there any tricks to the process?
And failing that, for next year I'm still likely to want some tractor gearing for that final push (yes, I *have* HTFU already). Can a TCR with the press-fit bottom bracket even be fitted with a triple? Are there any problems (aside from the general suckiness of SRAM) with running SRAM derailleurs and an Ultegra crank. Would it be best to change the front rings, for instance?
Having had to walk the final wall last year (even with a 34-28), I did two things - trained very hard, and bought what I thought was the right componentry to allow the Shimano drivetrain on my Giant TCR Advanced to shift a 34-32. I ended up with a Deore LX rear derailleur fitted with 10-speed jockey wheels, a SRAM 12-32 rear cassette, and a brand-new Dura-Ace chain (which they presumably joined at the right length), all to be shifted by Dura-Ace 7800 levers. The LBS fitted up, and thought it would work fine. It seemed to be shifting fine in (low-effort) testing.
13 km into the race, I got up out of the saddle for the first hard effort of the day. I wasn't doing anything silly like using 50-32, nor did I touch wheels. But somehow, the rear derailleur and chain ended up in the wheel, the hangar snapped clean in half. The end result - me flung over the handlebars and on the side of the road, to be picked up by the sag wagon (luckily, damage to me was limited to minor road rash).
The damage can be seen here, though I'm not sure it helps in the diagnosis much.
The undamaged setup can be seen here.
To my knowledge the derailleur hanger had not been damaged previously.
With all the preliminaries out of the way, and note that I'm *not* looking to scapegoat my LBS, who have looked after me well...
Does anybody see any obvious reason why this setup failed so spectacularly, except for the bad karma of mixing 404s with such ridiculously low gearing?
Has anybody got a similar setup to work, and if so were there any tricks to the process?
And failing that, for next year I'm still likely to want some tractor gearing for that final push (yes, I *have* HTFU already). Can a TCR with the press-fit bottom bracket even be fitted with a triple? Are there any problems (aside from the general suckiness of SRAM) with running SRAM derailleurs and an Ultegra crank. Would it be best to change the front rings, for instance?
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