Ex tee

I had a mid '00s xt derailleur on the old snake bike. Shifting has been suffering lately and I think it was related to the pivot where it screws into the hanger becoming gummed up over of many difficult years of service. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get in there to clean it. 

So, I had the brilliant idea to replace it with a contemporary xt derailleur with a clutch and all that stuff. I had heard that old thumb shifters (like my deer head xt) don't pull enough cable for 12 speed. I assumed that meant 12 speeds, not 12 speed derailleurs overall. 

Well, they don't work. The shifter only pulled enough cable to move about five gears out of seven. So much more for crispness and fewer dropped chains (a pretty rare occurrence). I guess I'll put a '90s stx on there. 

That's this week's tech corner with Brendan!

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Up the creek

On my beloved, but poorly built, Martin Team 2, I have been chasing down a persistent and very loud creek for six months. Traditional creaks are found in the bottom bracket, right? Extreme bottom bracket creek action was taken to no avail. My was frame broken? It got creaky once before and broke. 

What exactly is a thru axle? I've never thought a bike was flexy except one time I had a Mag 21 with the pressure unequal between the the fork legs. However, bike manufacturers concluded that bikes flex at unusable levels ten years ago and now you've got to elaborately screw your wheels in. I can even take the wheels off this dumb bike without a hex wrench. All these complicated screws and crevices are how the derailleur hanger attached. Well, I removed the rear wheel and heard the same creak when reattaching it! It was somewhere back there, but buried deep within the removable thing that is the threading for the thru axle as well as the derailleur hanger. The creak was coming from that and after months of fighting the noise, a little grease fixed it. None of this would have been necessary with a quick release. 

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