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Chain rubbing rear derailleur cage between upper and lower pulley

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Chain rubbing rear derailleur cage between upper and lower pulley

Old 10-05-20, 12:04 PM
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Bicycler043
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Chain rubbing rear derailleur cage between upper and lower pulley

A bit more than half a year ago I bought my first (second-hand) road bike. Around a month ago I gave it a good deep clean (and played with the adjustment a bit), but unfortunately I’m now stuck with a rattling sound from the chain. I’m pretty sure that it’s the chain rubbing the cage of the rear derailleur, between the upper and lower pulley. The chain seems to be out of center, which causes it to rub the cage around it, especially when riding in the big ring on the front derailleur. I checked multiple discussions online, but I haven’t found a good solution yet. It is possible to push the upper pulley a bit more towards the center, but this immediately gets undone after a single pedal stroke. All components are Shimano Sora. Do you have any suggestions to fix this issue?

For some reason I am not allowed to upload pictures (yet).
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Old 10-05-20, 01:04 PM
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Played with the adjustment, eh? Never Fix A Running Piece. Did you remove and reinstall the chain as part of your deep cleaning? You may have routed it through the derailleur incorrectly. https://www.madegood.com/bikes/threa...ar-derailleur/
If you would take some well-lit and clearly focused photos and upload them to a photo-sharing site, you could then post a link here, replacing the "." with "DOT" and adding a few spaces to fool the robots.
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Old 10-05-20, 01:27 PM
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Check this https://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help?area%5B%5D=52 Start from scratch, go step by step, no shortcuts.
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Old 10-05-20, 07:50 PM
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"...For some reason I am not allowed to upload pictures (yet)...."

Sorry for the inconvenience. We have found that imposing a 10 post minimum before allowing pictures & links, has greatly reduced the spam and other objectionable material.
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Old 10-05-20, 07:52 PM
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Did you remove the chain ? Is it the same chain or a replacement ?
Pedal backwards by hand slowly, and look closely at the chain. Is it going over a "tab" that it should be under , or the opposite ?
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Old 10-05-20, 09:30 PM
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Originally Posted by Bicycler043
A bit more than half a year ago I bought my first (second-hand) road bike. Around a month ago I gave it a good deep clean (and played with the adjustment a bit), but unfortunately I’m now stuck with a rattling sound from the chain. I’m pretty sure that it’s the chain rubbing the cage of the rear derailleur, between the upper and lower pulley. The chain seems to be out of center, which causes it to rub the cage around it, especially when riding in the big ring on the front derailleur. I checked multiple discussions online, but I haven’t found a good solution yet. It is possible to push the upper pulley a bit more towards the center, but this immediately gets undone after a single pedal stroke. All components are Shimano Sora. Do you have any suggestions to fix this issue?

For some reason I am not allowed to upload pictures (yet).
I’m with Homebrew01. I’m going to borrow some pictures from a site called bikesonrobson. They have a good article on the chain and derailer installation. Here’s the relevant pictures




The chain should route above the tab shown by the red arrow. If your chain goes under the tab (red arrow below), it will make a lot of noise And shift badly.



This is a common mistake.
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Old 10-06-20, 08:20 AM
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Hi all, thank you so much for your replies. To make the problem a bit more clear I included links to four photos underneath. I did not take off the chain, so I assume it is routed correctly. As you can see in the pictures, there seems to be an outwards tension, pushing the chain against the cage, which is worse in the big ring. In the fourth picture, you see how the chain is more centered if I push the upper pulley and chain more towards the wheel. But as mentioned, this immediately gets undone after a single pedal stroke.

https ://ibb dot co/Yyd7DPC
https ://ibb dot co/Zfy2DF9
https ://ibb dot co/CtdTpvN
https ://ibb dot co/vQZpLmW

Oh and I see on these pictures that it might already be time for another wash haha
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Old 10-06-20, 08:32 AM
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No pics for me
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Old 10-06-20, 08:35 AM
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Originally Posted by trailangel
No pics for me
Also not if you remove the spaces and change the "dot" to "." ?
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Old 10-06-20, 08:37 AM
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nada
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Old 10-06-20, 08:59 AM
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Originally Posted by trailangel
nada
I just uploaded them here as well.
ht tps: //w ww dot flickr dot com/ photos/ 190508546@N03/
Make sure you remove the spaces and replace the "dot" by ".".
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Old 10-06-20, 09:26 AM
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Pic assist. Not sure if I got the correct order.






Last edited by gearbasher; 10-06-20 at 09:34 AM.
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Old 10-06-20, 09:58 AM
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From the pictures, the chain is routed properly. However, the cage looks bent at the red arrow. Both the front and back plates look bent at the same location. This would push the derailer off towards the outside (direction of green arrow).



And, at the risk of a chain lube flame war, don’t use oil based lubricants if you want to avoid cleaning all the time.
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Old 10-06-20, 11:09 AM
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Bent cage . . . been in a side-swipe type accident . . . and someone tried to bend it back . . . a little too far.

Repairable by the way.

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Old 10-19-20, 09:24 AM
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Hi all, thanks for your help with this issue! The cage indeed seems to be bent, but I found that the noise was actually caused by the lack of proper lubricant after the cleaning. I tried a new wet lube instead of an old spray, which reduced the noise dramatically.
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