Peter@vecchios said:
Sounds like a FD height or alignment issue. FD cage should be about 1mm or less above big chainring and outer FD cage aligned with chain when in big ring and smallest(high gear) cog in back. PLUS the FD cage should be about 1mm from the chain, adjusted by the outer limit screw.
Chain 'speed' doesn't matter nor whether it's friction or ERGO.
I disagree with regard to the significance of how wide-or-narrow the chain is ...
To state the obvious, first, if a chain is too wide (e.g., a TRACK chain to state an extreme), then the plates of the front derailleur will rub against the chain sooner-rather-than-later ... the same is true if you were to use an 8-speed chain with a 9-/10/11-speed front derailleur OR a 9-speed chain in a 10-/11-speed front derailleur.
On the other side of the coin, if someone were to take their 8-speed drivetrain and install a 9-/10/11-speed chain in it and the stops are not adjusted, then when the front derailleur is engaged & shifted, it will more-than-likely NOT move the chain as far as it should to engage the next chainring ...
Will the chain eventually engage the OTHER chainring? Probably.
Well, say you adjust the stops on the front derailleur to move the chain sufficiently to eliminate the hesitation ... when that is done with too narrow a chain you end up with a situation akin to what often happened with the vintage Nuovo Record front derailleur whose cage plates were apparently fractionally further apart than the plates of most other front derailleurs as evidence by so many (but, not all, of course) Campagnolo Strada cranks whose inside of the driveside arm has too-often-seen 'rub mark' which was the result of the crankarm rubbing against the front derailleur -- this parallels the description of the OP's setup.
IMO, the importance of matching the front derailleur to the chain, and vice-versa, is amplified with indexed shifting.
As far as setting the lower edge of the outer cage of the front derailleur
1mm away from the teeth on the outer chainring as Shimano suggests, that certainly works; but, that is part of Shimano's
kluge to assist the ramps-and-pins on their chainrings. I've had some derailleurs where the lower edge of the outer plate was set as far away as 3mm (!?!) and the shifting was still fine.
Am I just lucky in how I adjust my front derailleurs, now, OR have I learned from encountering those few front derailleurs (Shimano has at least ONE clunker which I've owned) which are best relegated to the dust heap of history? I think the latter. And, the momentary (well, as long as the derailleur was in service -- sometimes years) frustration of using what I deem to be a crappy front derailleur has provided me with an appreciation for the limitations inherent in the front derailleur & chain combination ...
Peter, didn't you once say (probably, at least I year ago) that you thought that tuning a front derailleur was an art (or, something along that line of thought)? If it wasn't you, then it was someone else ...
Regardless, I think setting up a front derailleur is just a matter of NOT being too casual about which chain is used with a particular front derailleur, and vice-versa ...
To oversimplify:
MATCH THE CHAIN TO THE CASSETTE/(Freewheel) & MATCH THE FRONT DERAILLEUR TO THE CHAIN, or vice-versa.