Front Derailleur without barrel adjusters

Hello,

I have a Ridley Fenix road bike with internal cable routing for the derailleurs. Yesterday, I decided to change the front inner cable because the end is frayed. However, after I got it changed, I had a hell of a time trying to get the front derailleur properly set again. Without barrel adjusters, the only way to get the slack out of the line is to manually pull on it.

I am wondering if there is a trick to doing this? Do I just need to pull on the cable really hard and screw the cable bolt? Should I hold the derailleur in place by hand and then screw the cable bolt? Or should I just take the plunge and buy inline barrel adjusters? And time is money because the season is coming to an end.

 

Very very carefully.

Is this a Shimano 11-speed setup?

 

As oldbobcat says, do it "Very, very carefully." FWIW. In the days before inline adjusters were commonly used on bike frames ([color=0000ff]yes, there was once such a time[/color]), I would hold the end of the cable with a pair of needlenose pliers & pull it taut ... and then, tighten the pinch bolt ....

• Holding the end of the cable with a pair of pliers makes it fairly easy to contol the tension, IMO ... So, I still use pliers to hold the end of the cable prior to securing it 99.99% of the time. I like to leave at least 1" of exposed cable ... sometimes, a tad longer than an inch. Capping the ends of your cables will prevent fraying.

Regardless, adding an inline adjuster at some point in the future is probably a good idea.

 

Back then, precision adjusting wasn't needed because the shifters weren't indexed. A little slack was no big deal.

For 11-speed Shimano front derailleurs, my system follows. First, shift to the small ring, undo your cable fastening bolt and get all your alignment squared away. Next, over-tighten your low limit screw. How much depends on what kind of grip you can get on the cable end as you tighten the fastening bolt. Tighten the fastening bolt, not so tight that you delaminate or crush the cable. This is just a test fitting. Loosen the low limit screw so the chain barely rubs the plastic guide on the inner plate. If there is still a small bit of cable tension, this might be right. Tighten the fastening bolt a bit. Loosen the high limit screw a bit for safety and try a test shift. If it works, re-adjust the high limit and do more test shifts. If it doesn't, repeat until you get it right, using the over-tightening of the low limit screw as a guide. Actually, with concealed cables you want to start a little tight because the housings will settle into the ferrules even as you're working.

And resolve to install an adjuster next time you do this. It saves your cable.

 

... AND, I think that is another reason to consider using coiled brake cable housing whose ends have been properly deburred instead of the parallel stranded housing which will fail if the outer sheath ever fails ([color=ffa500]e.g., a potential problem due to UV degradation[/COLOR]) OR if the ferrules ever fail ([COLOR=ffa500]less likely, but it could certainly happen[/COLOR]). THAT IS, beyond the few minutes needed to debur the housing's inner coil, it is simpler (IMO) installation & subsequent maintenance ... In MY book, that's[COLOR=008000] a good thing![/COLOR]