Gwame

Hi, first timer to this forum as a new cyclist and was hoping to get some advice.

I acquired an old bike from a friend, it's decent but was unusable due to having been left idle and outside for several years. A bike mechanic friend of mine got everything working that he could, with one exception. The front derailleur is snapped off and needs to be replaced. It seems to be a specific type so I'm struggling to find it. At present I can cycle the bike and use the rear gears without issue, but the chain is not being held in place by anything so it tends to click and sometimes drop to a lower gear.

So the bike is a Reflex Alpine T6. I tried adding a photo, but as a new user, I can't.

From what I can tell, it's a braze-on front derailleur that I need to order. But there seem to be various types or sizes and I'm not sure how to tell which one to order.

I'd greatly appreciate some advice, or if anyone can tell which it is that I need, please point me towards it and I can buy it and fit it on.

Thanks!

Litespud

tell us about your crankset and chainrings. How many rings, what sizes. How was the previous FD cable routed? When you sat the FD is braze-on “from what you can tell”, what does that mean? AFAIK, braze-on vs clamp-on is binary - it’s one of the other

Gwame

Thanks for your reply. I'm looking through that Sheldon Brown website at the moment but there's a lot there to take in. Forgive my my potential misuse or misunderstanding of technical terms.

If we're talking about the the sprockets on which the chain sits, I'm seeing three rings on the front and eight on the back. The FD cable is still routed along/beneath the horizontal part of the frame, where it then trails downward to where the derailleur was attached to the seat tube.

I said braze-on because the seat tube isn't cylindrical, it has a shape where it is cylindrical at the front but sticks out at the back. The remnants of the FD are still there from where it was welded on, and that means it's not clamp-on, right?

dsbrantjr

Try uploading some clear, well focused and well lit photos to a picture sharing site and attach a link with some extra spaces and "dot" for the "." to fool the filters

Gwame

OK, here goes!
ibb[dot]co/wL93TZv

tomtomtom123

those aren't very clear photos of the braze on.

Gwame

ibb[]co/Mgcgbxm

tomtomtom123

You've got a giant hole in your braze on. was your old derailleur able to stay on there stably?

If you say that you've got 3 chainrings, then you have a triple crank and need a triple derailleur. If you say that the derailleur cable runs on the top tube and then drops down to the derailleur, then you need a top pull derailleur. However, your photo shows the cable coming from the bottom, not the top. Are you sure the cable is supposed to come from the top? If the cable comes from the bottom, then you need a bottom pull derailleur.

I don't know how you're going to solve the giant hole in the braze on, but one solution might be to use the SRAM angled FD shims 11.7615.011.000. They usually come in a pack of 2 for $8 here, but I see some online shops selling 1 piece for $11. If you do get 2 pieces, you could flip them 180 degrees so that the angle cancels each other out so that the back and front surfaces are parallel, and then put one behind the braze on, and the second one in front of the braze on, to sandwich it, so that the FD and washer has something to bear on as you tighten the bolt. But you'll still end up with an extra angle of the FD, although if you're still within the tolerances, then the extra angle wouldn't matter. There are some cheap shims on eBay or aliexpress for $5 each.

Otherwise, I don't know what you can do about the big hole. Maybe someone else has an idea. I'm not sure how easy it is to remove the entire brazed-on part to attach a clamp instead.

SJX426 

Gwame Here is an example of what the Braze On should look like with a FD attached.
P1030407, on Flickr

A top view of another assembly.
P1020194, on Flickr

Yours looks like it was violently abused!