How To Set Up & Adjust Any Shimano Rear Mech | MTB Derailleur Adjustment

Removing dust from the gears of your mountain bike may seem a little complicated but honestly it is very simple, as soon as you know all the components of the

derailleur

, it is also a great skill to learn because you will need to

adjust

the gears in time and it also means that you can also help your friends. Now in today's video I'm going to show you how to do it with a Shimano

derailleur

, but the Prince mount remains the same no matter what brand you have, so before you make any

adjust

ments, let it go. I'm just explaining the design of a

rear

derailleur now in one hand.

I think it's Neil's oldest alien. Accident damage in the lobby to spit worn and a little dirty. This is a Shimano Deore XT. It may be more expensive than the one you have. but it has the same basic functions and features, now starting at the top, here's the bolt that mounts it to the bike. Now it can be a four or five or sometimes a tox depending on the particular model or model year you have. a five next we have the parallelogram part now this is a spring loaded cage now you have this alias in order and this fundamentally is what allows the derailleur to move and shift the chain between those sprockets.

Next you have the spring loaded bottom cage, this is a bottom part of the derailleur here, I'm just going to turn it around so you can see this, you have two wheels, they are known as pulley wheels, guide wheels or sometimes even as jockey wheels, are now associated equally in all directors. and this spring loaded cage just moves back and forth so you can tension the chain and also enable it when you're on those bigger gears or the bigger sprockets so the chain can stretch and basically compensate for that now. The derailment is like this, you will see a clutch, the telltale sign is that you will have a little lever here where you can turn it on and off, it is not an essential thing, it helps keep the chain on and make your bike quieter but it does not affect the performance of the gear change and, consequently, it is not something that we are going to see in this video.

There are three

adjustment

points that you actually have on the limit screws and on the B screw, the Beast grew. If we deal first with the one that adjusts the gap between the top of the guide wheels and the bottom of your cassette, the reason you need to make that

adjustment

is that you may have a cassette and the largest cog will be a 42, some they could be a 51 like the ones I have on this bike here consequently the derailleur needs to be set at a slightly different height in order to do its job properly so once you've done that you'll never need to adjust it again and then there are the Limit screws that simply fit. the maximum limits within which Irelia can move on the small sprocket or on the active sprocket, of course, if you have it in the wrong place in the big pocket, there is a chance that your chain will jump onto the spokes, for example. what's really key is making sure that we have those limit screws that are tightened correctly they can also, if you don't have the Majestic correctly, just interfere with the indexing of your gears now, if you're wondering what indexing is, that's just the term which is used to refer to one click per gear, one gear, one gear.

Again, and so on, the last thing you'll see in the order alias is where the cable comes in, so if you look at the one on my chain, stone my bike here and look at this one in my head again, you can see how it works the outer hose comes back here and then it just secures onto this arm on the inside of the derailleur and there you have it, a fundamental part of a raelia rod and they are all pretty much the same so now it's time to index fundamentally a

rear

derailleur, there are just a few things you need to do.

The first is to make sure the derailleur is straight and securely attached to the bike. The next is to tighten those limit screws, so let's take a close look at how to do that and the last is to make sure you have the correct cable tension. Once you have those three simple things figured out, your gears will run like a dream Now, before you start the process, you obviously want to make sure. that the derailer is not in good working condition and then your cable passes freely inside the outer cable, just let it pass through the gears and it is not indexed anyway, you should feel if there is any additional friction, if any , then you might want to replace that, okay before you start making adjustments, and first you want to make sure your bike is in the right gear, so shift down until you're on that smaller sprocket at the rear, which It's your highest gear now on the bars.

You're going to use your finger to do that, so shift it until you're in that gear and then you want to widen the barrel adjuster towards the shifter, so let's first move on to reaching the limits now if you have a clutch. on your derailleur it will definitely help you and benefit you if the clutch is really off why no one said it was just reaching to check and then you will need an allen wrench or a screwdriver depending on what your derailleur is. a two millimeter screwdriver yours may well be a Philips or a Phillips screwdriver now if you get in line of sight what you're looking for is that the rear derailleur, both wheels here are completely aligned in a vertical line under that cog wheel.

Now, if you manipulate the bottom cage down here, you can get a really good viewing position here. Now just look at how vertical it is, if the derailleur itself is actually bent, then you'll need to adjust that note while we do an Adjustment here, if I turn this screw clockwise on the limit screw, you can see that the derailleur moves in and counterclockwise, it moves out, if it is too far in you will never get a small gear or a high gear and if it is too far in the opposite direction then the chain may jump off the top accidentally and come off, the paint will get stuck there, so that's a good reason to make sure it's properly aligned.

It's really that simple, of course, getting the point of view is key. and that's why you should sit on the back of the bike. Now you want to repeat this with the larger pocket, but there are some small factors here. The first is that if you have huge tires on your bike it can be very difficult to get a good line of sight, if that's the case you may want to consider removing the rear tire. The next thing to keep in mind is if you already have the cable on the derailleur or if the cable is in place now, you can manipulate the derailleur. in position meaning you don't need the cable or you can use your shifters if your cable is mounted.

I'm just going to manually manipulate my derailleur there so carefully move the trailer and turn the pedals you also have to do her so your face doesn't hit the tire if you're doing what I'm doing here and there you go so it's on the bigger pocket now I'm just going to hold the gear cage here so you can see like I explained to you Before line of sight is absolutely key for this, it can be really tricky and I have my eye right on the edge of the tire here, but I can't see what I'm doing, just like adjusting the other limit screw you want. to make sure and that derailleur cage is vertically below that and it may take a little more work here to get it right, but once you have it, it's the key to good shifting, it's doubly important here at the top , although if you do not enable Doria. to ride high enough, you're not going to get into that bigger gear that you're going to need on steep climbs, but the most important thing is that if you shift too much, you could create damage, you could force the derailleur or break it, you could break the

mech

anical suspension.

You could jam the chain behind the cassette between the spokes, which can break the chain and also the spokes, so be careful, take a little time, there is no rush and you will get it at the next adjustment you need. What you're doing is the B tension or that B screw, now this basically turns the doraleous slightly and allows the top jockey wheel to be separated from the larger sprockets on the cassette. Now it's very important to do this right because you just won. I can't shift cleanly if it's bad, basically now the height depends on the

mech

anical and cassette combination you have, if you have up to 11 speeds and you have 42 as the largest you are looking at between 5. and a 6 millimeter gap between the top jockey wheel and the top of the cassette rings and if you have up to I think it's a 46, you need between 8 and 9 millimeters, however if you have 12 speeds, things are a little more simplified, you don't have to remember those numbers.

If you look on the back of the neck you will see a small mark, it could be a groove or it could be a painted mark like on this XG r1 here and all the ones we have. What you need to do is go around the non-drive side of the bike and you need to use screw B clockwise to make it move down and clockwise to make it move up to basically Align that line or groove with the sprockets. It's really quite simple, it can be hard to see if it got big by growing like this.

I've looked at it closely and now you can see it. Note: just watch the change moving up and down as I do this, you can see exactly what's happening and like me. Let's say we're in line of sight looking back here. I can see that this point is perfectly aligned, so it's the correct height for your screen B. Okay, so you have the tension set and you have the outside and the inside. established the limit, the last thing you need to master is to simply adjust the cable tension and that way we can dial in the indexing.

Now what you'll need to do is simply undo the cable clamp on this derailleur, it's four millimeters. and it's located in the back here. I'm going to undo it carefully and then what I wanted to do is run the wire through to make sure it's oriented correctly there. Now it differs on some doraleous, but you can clearly see the orientation. the way it moves around the bolt and there's a little slot for it to fit in, they want to take this out until you're taught to never tighten if it's too tight you'll be very unlikely to go back down to this sprocket and you can even see the pull it the big difference it makes.

This is a pretty light action system, so I said you just want to pull it to teach you that you want to cut the bolt and tighten it now, sometimes when you're tightening it. You might want to do it just as a treat a little tighter just hold the cage if it's from the derailleur just to resist it moving there we go okay so now K guys you can see here I can still move it slightly with your hand so that it is taut and tight. is a key, okay and now the last step, the most important, is to make sure that the gears are indexed, of course, this is the correlation of a click of the shifter giving you a gear when you pedal.

Now let's start with that. this smaller sprocket because that's where we made those last adjustments and then we're going to pedal it lightly on the work stand here and there, aim a click at the lever now hopefully that can be correlated to a click given a gear shift and it's actually come back down perfectly, the idea is to make sure that the first three or four sprockets have a perfect shift between them, so I'm going to set up to show you what happens if it's not quite right if for example, There's too much tension here, it'll actually go up two or three gears instead of just going up one gear, so I'm going to put a little more tension on it now, you'll see when I shift gears, it'll jump up. more than one cog wants to jump there we go and essentially go up and that's just one click it's all it goes back down just one click and it jumps three times so in this case I want to make sure I take some of the tension of the cable back off again, well you are adjusting the tension of the cable, you can do this quarter turn at a time until you have it right, one gear, one click across the cassette and it should be relatively smooth. shifting up and down like I said if there isn't enough tension on the cable it won't jump against you you need to apply a little more tension on the cable if there is too much tension on the cable it will jump too many gears so just experiment with That's it, they leave it like that. there where you have the barrel adjuster there and then you will absolutely master your shifting, those are the basics of how to adjust a Shimano rear derailleur to get that perfect shifting.

What I said at the beginning of the video, it's the same principle whether you have an asura X level derailleur or even an easier. As always, thanks for learning about GM beer technology.We have a lot of interesting free content for you, so make sure to subscribe if you haven't already because there is a lot of information available that is also free for you. Our Instagram page also has a lot of interesting stuff, so follow it as always, thanks for stopping by.