Category: Rear Derailleurs

When you bolt a rear derailleur to your bike, generally, the derailleur cage will be outside of the cassette, the smallest cog, or high-gear. If you have a rapid rise rear derailleur, you may see that the derailleur cage is closer to spokes, or low gear (biggest cog), if cable is not attached. If you have a derailleur that is produced in 2005 or later, and not Shimano, it’s next to impossible that it’s a rapid rise derailleur. These derailleurs are not “invented” by Shimano, but they made them in late 90’s to early 2000’s. Somehow they embraced the idea, and their XT and XTR derailleurs were rapid rise at the time. However, they disappeared, because nobody liked them. I may be exaggerating, yes, but at least there is quite a lot of hate against them. Why rapid rise derailleurs… Continue Reading What is rapid rise rear derailleur ?

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Rear derailleurs have bling factor, and also dictates how your bike ride, along with gearing. A bad derailleur, either front or back, easily makes you detest your bike. Yet there is a lot of nomenclature, slang, love and hate, mechanical parts and legends involved, it works amazingly simple: In fact, it’s a movable chain guide, and that’s all about it. As the name suggests, what it does to “derail” the chain into another cog. It is generally operated by Bowden cable, in engineering speak, but electronic versions are getting more common, albeit with slow adoption due to huge price difference. Weirdly, it may even be operated by hydraulics, like some Rotor groupsets. What is long cage? short cage? When buying a new drivetrain, or even a new chainring for your crankset or new rear cassette, you should consider derailler capacity.… Continue Reading All you need to know about rear derailleur

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