[saukit]

Hi all,
Just bought my first plus bike which happened to be a singlespeed so I switched it to gears. During the derailleur install/tuning process I noticed that the size of the tire made it impossible to visually line up the der/cassette cogs by sighting down the bike from the rear.

The only way I can see around this off the top of my head is to pull the tires off and tune the derailleur with just the rim mounted. Problem is the wheels are already mounted tubeless and this route is going to create a bunch of extra work.

So, for you fat/plus mechanics, any tricks on how to get a good visual sight line on the low limit screw adjustment? Thanks!

 

[Lone Rager]

Hey, who are you calling a fat/plus mechanic? I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I'm hardly plus size. I use the last of these three suggestions.

Deflate the tire without unseating the beads.
Use a mirror.
Set cable tension in a cog you can see, open the low limit screw, shift to big cog, adjust low limit screw until it touches. Check chain running on cog and push on inward on the RD to ensure it doesn't move and over shift the big cog. Verify shifting into big cog, smooth running, no over shifting...

 

[Forest Rider]

Line it up the best you can on the lowest gear you can sight in.

The manually adjust by feel. Turn the limit screw 1/2 turn, shift with your hand. Small adjustments then fine tune and you'll be good.

I haven't done a lot of tuning, but I never got it a thought to stand behind the bike and line up the pulleys first.
I've usually tuned limit screws without a cable connected actually.
I get what you're doing. I haven't paid attention to that on my newst bike because I have had to tune it aside from making a 1/4 turn adjustment to a limit screw once.

Good luck!

 

[J.B. Weld]

Turn the low limit screw most of the way in, then push the derailleur inboard by pushing on the derailleur parallelogram while turning the pedals ( bike needs to be in a stand of some sort)

Since the screw is turned in it won't shift into the biggest cog, maybe not even into the last few cogs. Turn the screw out half a turn or so and try again. Keep doing that until it shifts into the big cog and runs smoothly, if it starts tapping the spokes you went too far so screw it in a tad.

Then shift through the gears with the shift lever and see how it runs in the big cog (make sure cable tension is correct for all gears) At this point you may have to turn the limit screw out a quarter turn or so so it will shift cleanly up, the derailleur will settle correctly under the cog once you release the shift lever.

This may sound sort of complicated but actually takes just a few minutes. IMO it's the best way to adjust limits and you could do it blindfolded.

 

[saukit]

Thanks all for the replies, I will give these suggestions a shot. I took the bike out today and it's running smoothly, what I ended up doing yesterday is disconnecting the shift cable and manually pushing the derailler up to the big cog to check adjustment.

After a bit of fiddling around I got the derailleur gears centered on the chain but it was a bit of a pain. I'll try some of the suggested methods next time as they seem easier than what I did.