[Yak] Front derailer cable routing

[Harvey Sachs]

This is Harvey
I don't often criticize BF. I am very fond of my Crusoe, and of its 
predecessor, a very early twin-tube model.

However, I have never seen such a poor cable routing as the stock 
version on Geoff's bike. The angle of travel from the cable stop to the 
derailleur action lever where the inner cable is clamped seems to pull 
more from the side than from the bottom (as it should), so there is 
about as much torque rotating the FD clockwise (from the top) as pulling 
down to shift up. I regard this as a design flaw, because it is so hard 
to keep the FD from rotating.

I felt that the best possible field fix (not including brazing on a 
cable stop in a better place) was to route the bare-naked inner cable, 
in a sheath, under the BB.  It worked, and seemed to work well, but 
looked a bit unconventional.

Geoff, on the other hand, seems to prefer paddling upstream and 
replcating the BF factory's (seemingly) counterproductive method. :-)

No skin off my back; he's still a good guy.

harvey

Geoff Gee said:
Although I hate speaking for Harvey--he can correct me later--we
expected some lateral flexibility when mounting the front derailer.
However, this "window" was very narrow as a consequence of the
side-pull cable routing.  Several times we adjusted the front derailer
only for it to slowly but surely point towards the inside of the bike.


In other words, we were able to set the derailer properly and tighten
the derailer to the mount.  But after a few shifts to the big
chainring, the derailer was always pulled out of alignment.  This was
true even after we jury-rigged the mount with a larger washer and some
sandpaper to increase the surface area and friction of the mount.  In
my limited experience, the angle of the derailer was similar to setups
I have seen on full sized bikes with a standard bottom pull routing.
 >From what I gathered from Harvey's facial expressions and
exasperation--keep in mind that he has a lot more experience with
bikes--he was pretty surprised that the mount was unable to hold the
derailer in position.

-G