[QUOTE=Dancing Skeleton;21905638]
Originally Posted by
cxwrench
That makes sense.
But why does shifting sound "harsher" when shifting under load, like when pushing hard on a steep grade?
I, and several of people in my club replace their RD hangers every season or two, and have found shifting to be better afterwards.
Because in the 11 cog, at best there is about 5 teeth carrying the full load. Where as in the larger cogs there can easily be ~12-16 teeth or more engaged with the chain depending on cog size. So the force per tooth is massively different (and associated friction & wear) at either end of the cassette.
In any case, though the OP has his issue solved I do understand where the hanger comment comes from. I had a similar issue on one bike where the 11 cog would skip at random. It turns out that the derailleur pivots/parallelogram wouldn't relax outboard far enough. (The bike was a special case retrofit with a hand crafted dropout/hanger.) A 0.5mm washer between the derailleur & the derailleur hanger fixed the issue by physically moving the derailleur physically outboard.
It was quite perplexing, you would expect similar symptoms from a bent hanger, but no. It was just an unfortunate combination of components & the 0.5mm spacer was the solution.