I have a touring / cross bike which has a traditional xt triple chainset (52/42/32 from memory) and an associated triple road bike shifter. I have never been able to get the front mech (xt) to work across all 3 chain rings …either it will not go into one of them or, at best, rubs badly on the chain. Should I give up? Would a traditional down tube shift be any better or is it likely that the mech just can’t cover the range? It’s bugging the s###t out of me !

Sometimes messing about with the height helps. Or accept that you can’t get full range on all rings, but then on the smallest up front you are going to shift up half way thorough most of the time.

If you’re using brifters then you will struggle to get a good shift with an mtb mech. I bought a tiagra triple mech for relative peanuts and the problem was solved.

front mech is wrong if your using road bike shifters.

Wicki…you may be onto something!

Well I took the bike to the LBS with a new road style front mech which they decided not to fit (as they claimed they managed to get the original mech working with some modification) . Anyway 3 days and 200 miles later it seems this wasn’t the case. I’m now considering old school down tube shifters. Anyone any idea if these would work with 9 speed XT mechs?

Shifters

You just need a road front mech, I think.
Should fix the issue.

Xt Touring triple is 26-38-48

I’m running one with a Claris triple shifter and a Claris front mechanical

As above road mech won’t play nice with MTB front mech these days. I reckon by playing with cable entry pivot angles I could probably get it to work ok but using the right bits mines working perfect 🙂

As above, try a roadie triple front mech first. My setup works fine, but I had to get the BB spacing bang on. Roadie 105 triple levers(5703), roadie triple front mech(5703), XT trekking chainset (771?), 11-36 10 speed MTB cassette, 9 speed XT shadow rear mech.

Make sure that you get a triple specific front road mech too – the double ones are different and don’t work as well.