FREEBIRD1

I have a six speed cruiser bike for my wife, it shifted fine, got on it the other day and the jockey wheels started hitting the cogs. I tried tuning it to no avail, high/low/B screws had no effect. I even took a link out of the chain to see if that would help. Cables are new, wheel alignment OK, no bent hangar either. I've replaced and adjusted a few of these, and never run into this. Any ideas?

Thanks

Kontact

What derailleur? Was any type of service done, wheel removed, freewheel changed, etc?

There is a B screw, not B screws. What were you turning?

Schweinhund

He's lumped all the single screws together and called them plural. slow down.

Iride01 

Evidently has more than one jockey wheel too that can hit multiple cogs at the same time!

But despite the smart-ass comments, I too will have to ask what else has been recently done to the bike as well as what specific RD are we talking about.

And since all the adjustment screws where moved, then really the OP needs to start back at square one and pretend they are doing an initial install of the RD.

Limit screws will never affect the jockey wheel touching the cog.

Schweinhund

The only smart-assed comment was yours. Kontact obviously did not understand.
You on the other hand did. So keep it to yourself. Argue all you want to the mirror.

truthseeker14

I had a derailleur which i had disassembled and put back together. I put the back cage on upside down. It looked right when I did it. I couldn't figure out why the cage was hitting the larger sprockets. I tried everything but nothing worked till I discovered my mistake.

smd4

A picture or two might help.

Andrew R Stewart 

A sort of common (at least here in the rust belt) is the B pivot becoming frozen in place, the der no longer moves freely as the cage spring and B pivot spring "work with" each other. Grime and water can enter the pivot and cause corrosion and/or too much friction resulting in that pivot binding. Removing the der and feeling how much effort is needed to rotate the mounting bolt (which is the B pivot "axle") will provide a lot of info.

I've overhauled this pivot on many, mostly Shimano, ders over the years. A simple job that is hard to do with only two hands and no bench vise. But this servicing has extended the life of many ders and costs less than replacing the der.

Not sure if this is what is going on with the OP's bike but worth learning about anyway. Andy

FREEBIRD1

Here's a shot of the set-up. The chain, freewheel, derailleur , cable and twist shifter have less than 25 miles of use. The odd thing is it worked perfectly smoothe and shifted great, parked it in my garage and the next day that dereilleur cage/top wheel was rubbing the cogs.. A bike shop replaced all of these components last year and it was working great. Thanks all for the input troubleshooting this.

veganbikes

It is called cross chaining, the rear derailleur is on the largest cog and the front derailleur is on the largest chaining and that poor derailleur is being stretched to the limits. It is not a quality derailleur to begin with and it is just being further abused in that position which is probably causing the noise which it usually will. Teaching proper shifting will help. You never want to be in big/big or little/little
This may help: https://www.themanual.com/outdoors/h...ft-bike-gears/

FREEBIRD1

It only has a single chain ring in front (6 speed)

soyabean

The Tourney is a low-end RD which barely works at best with a MegaRange 34T and you are trying to ride the bike like it had a 1X groupset.

That new freewheel in the back should be a 28T or 30T, no more.

FREEBIRD1

It's not the Megarange set, it;s a 28T and the bike is just a 6 speed cruiser.

soyabean

This is a very simple setup and there are loads of Park Tool videos to explain exactly how to re-install this from scratch.

My suggestion is to go back to the same local bike shop and they will make it working great again.

Andrew R Stewart 

Can you show us an image when the chain is in the smallest rear cog?

Now with VASTLY more info to see (that thousand word thing called a photo) I suspect the chain is way shorter than ideal. How did you determine the chain's length? Many cruiser type bikes have a fairly long chainstay and the common 114 to 116 links in a chain's packaging can often be just a few links too short for these bikes. Andy

FREEBIRD1

Thanks Andrew, I was thinking the same on the chain,I have a few extra sections I could add to test it, the shop actually installed it, along with the shifter,freewheel and derailleur. I'm surprised it worked as well as it did, if it is short? the bike shop is a hit-and-mis, sometimes you get good work, other times not so good.

smd4

A bike shop shouldn’t have let the bike leave like that.

FREEBIRD1

I've had a few bike shop disasters on new, and bikes I've brought for service ( a couple of them are still in my garage). I'm working on getting better at doing all this stuff myself, so I don't have to rely on them, the hourly rates are very high. This should have been an easy adjustment, I have done many of them, but I suspect they had original chains and that variable was not in the mix, hopefully a longer chain will get it going.

Bill Kapaun

With the chain on the largest Ring & Cog, you should be able to pull 1-2" of "slack".
Do you?

smd4

Seems I’ve seen this technique before. But can’t remember when. Either way, this is a stupid technique. Avoid.

Schweinhund

Thinking Andrew R Stewart Hit a home run.
Ever notice that most of the inexpensive cruisers use a common chainguard format? (hole position)
That chain stay, if that is correct with this bike, it is about an inch longer than the last huffy that I had to add links to a new chain to make it long enough.

FREEBIRD1

The bike is a 30 yeat old Schwinn cruiser, it does seem to have a longer sweeping chain stay. I would still like to figure out why it worked so well with a short chain? did the spring in that derailleur all the sudden get weak sitting for a year? I have another one of theses cheap Shimano derailleurs on a gravel type bike that sees heavy use, works great, and has been around a few years.

smd4

Could be the simplest of solutions--maybe she never went into that gear until recently?

mpetry912 

Ya think ?

/markp

smd4

Yes. Yes I do.