Low Hangin' Gears

G'day,

I brand spankin new here, and got a question.

about 8 weeks ago, i bought myself a new Apollo LSX 1.0 bike.
This bike came with shimano rapid fire gears.

These gears struck me as strange as they consist of 2 quite HUGE idler gears. so yeh 1st ques is; Whats the deal with these HUGE gears, not to mension why the hell one is bright red :S

2nd ques, is that the deraliure hangs down a long way. This would not really worry much, but i feel it is unnaturally low, and there for if u ciould picture it in your mind, the chain comes off the back sprokets at almost right angles to the ground, and i feel this may be causing a casual slip. not to mension the low hangin deraliure arm prohibits me from goin "off-road" as it clips rocks etc. that would normally be no problem.
Would a longer chain help this? or any ideas?

Any response would be sooper,
Cheers, Will

 

It looks like a mountain bike to me. That is probably the problem. Didn't you mean to buy a road bike?

 

G'day, nope, i think it is a new LSX1.0
LSX 1.0 rb?
It is red and black in colour.
The idlers are much larger than normal.
the top idler is black and has many holes in it, thelower is red but solid plasic. this cog would easily be 4.5cm wide.
weird, but yeh, and ground clearence is realy limited.

cheers though

 

Got a digicam? let's have a look!

 

nope, but i found pic on net, I'll leave on ym server for a while.



Hope this helps,

Cheers.

 

note to self, image button does not put image into msg.

 

yes, definitely looks like a mountain bike to me. That's your problem. Take it back to the shop, and tell them you need a road bike. That will fix everything

 

yeh, tis mtb.

the whole point that i was making, is that the arm hangs so low, it prevents me from goin offroad...

nice paint job though

 

Wal,

That's just a fairly low end Shitmano derailleur you've got. The big jockey wheels (that's what they're called on bikes, not idlers) are designed to reduce wear of these parts. It's true these make for a longer derailleur cage than is normal. If the derailleur angle on your bike looks significantly different from the picture above, I would get a competent mechanic to check it.

I would also add that this is not really a serious off road bike. It will handle a bit of irregular use on firetrails and the like, but not regular hard use on more technical terrain and in poor conditions. If you do ride it in that fashion, you can expect worse than a bent derailleur cage.

Sam.

 

ritio, cheers

i figued sumfin like that, but didnt wanna admit it
ahwell, cheers

 

I've got one of these also and found that if you do some minor jumping ie kerbs ect, the rear derailleur can flick forward when you land.

It then seems to get stuck there and because there is less tension and less chain in contact with the sprocket, the chain will slip when power is applied.

Just click it back into place when this happens.
First time it happened I had it back at the shop and the guy took 1 second to fix the problem (embarrassing)

Cheers

Dirk