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So leaving a spring under tension does nothing to alter its elasticity then is the consensus do we think?
If it is a concern simply pop it off the front chain ring? If you are riding regular then the rear mech will generally wear out/become damaged before your concerns become apparent.
Depends whether I arrive home from the uphill or downhill side.
What gear do you leave your bike in when you put it away?
Generally whatever I left home in, occasionally I'll have doffed my gilet though
Torque wrenches are defo backed off though- as per others, they are a precise device, dérailleurs aren’t.
"The most significant result from the test is that all of the wrenches remained within tolerance,
regardless of whether they were left at the minimum scale setting or at their maximum."
NB "Whilst the occasional user should adjust back to the minimum scale setting after use,
if you use the wrench in an environment such as a commercial garage, the choice is yours. Either way is
acceptable."
So leaving a spring under tension does nothing to alter its elasticity then is the consensus do we think?
Springs certainly lose tension after time
is this relevant to bicycles? Not in my experience
30 years of riding mountain bikes and I've never thought about this one. Though I don't think I've ever created a maintenance issue because of the gear I left my bike in on the previous ride. There's plenty of things to do maintenance wise before I'd worry about this.
Never bothered, never even thought about it. Never had an issue.
The only exception is that I have left bike in highest gear if I've left the bike unattended and unlocked for a few seconds in the vague hope that it will slow a thief down slightly
Running a 12 speed SRAM GX rear mech on a bike; I'd be overjoyed if spring tension was anywhere near the top 10 of things that could bork it. The spring is probably the strongest part of it, given they moulded the rest of it from cheese.
Never considered it.
The road bike gets dumped into the granny ring as otherwise the gravel driveway would be deadly. But other than that, depends how tired I was in the last few hundred metres to the door.
Never found it an issue.
Springs do creep over time, to the extent the drivers side on most cars will sit lower than the passenger after a few years because most cars only ever have one person in them. Even though driving time is comparatively low.
I guess that would be offset by the fuel tank usually being on the passenger side (for safety reasons, apparently), if we drove on the same side of the road as those crazy Europeans and Americans.
A low one so it's ready to jump on and cycle away next time.
To the ones that drop down - do you also remove the chain to preserve the jockey tensioner and decompress your shock and fork springs? Same principle.
Like others I've left it in gear for years and never had an issue with losing tension, cable stretch is easily adjusted out as well so I don't really see the issue.
Common sense says to leave it in smallest with spring unstretched but experience suggests a lot leave it in big/big after a salty shitty ride and wonder why the mechs seize
I'd say the mech position has no bearing at all on the outcome of putting a bike away covered in 'salt and shit'.
I will answer later once I’ve jacked the car up so there is less strain on the springs
Yeah but you miss the point. The point is whether or not they’ll last longer if not stretched (shock springs are compressed anyway but the effect is probably the same) and obv it’s not practical to do that on a car every night – however I wonder if the shocks would last longer if you did…
They might but the suspension bushes probably wouldn't thank you. I'd rather do 4 springs than umpteen bushes.
The spring thing is a new one to me. I leave it on whatever cog it's on when I stop. If that happened to be the smallest one it might occur to me to move it up nearer the middle for getting going again but that's about it.
Sounds like one of those things that is true in a very abstract sense but makes zero difference in reality.
You lot are really weird.
*Laughs in Rohloff*
Anecdotally, I replaced the suspension coil springs on my Land Rover because they had got shorter.
On the other hand, I've known of vintage trucks that have been parked up for decades which will have had some of the valves fully open with springs fully compressed all that time with no ill effect.
Whichever it's in when I'm done, but that is usually a higher gear by default
I leave it in whatever gear it was in which is usually a middling one. I've never had any issues, I've got 15 year old mechs that are still fine even when compared to new ones.
Springs fatigue and get both shorter and softer spring rate as a result.
Hmm. In practice? I replaced all the springs on my Passat after maybe 12 years and I noticed no change at all - and I'm very picky as I'm sure you all know 🙂 Changing the dampers had a big effect though, it added to the spring rate quite a lot so if you did both at the same time you might feel that change and attribute it to spring rate.
An easy one so I have a chance of doing a crank revolution without falling sideways. 😉
no_eyed_deer
You lot are really weird.
I'm with this poster.
Back in the 90s when I started all this mtb lark, we used to hang about in a bike shop, where the owner was really anal about maintenance and all that.. he taught us loads of silly things about fixing, cleaning and looking after our bikes. Never, not once ever, did he mention which gear/cog/chainring to leave our bikes in after use. Nosirree.
And Jim knew his stuff.
I did check my bikes that were hanging up and 2 of them were in smallest cog - but I know why - cos I had taken the back wheels off them at some point. That's one of the things I did learn from Jim - always shift into smallest cog before taking off the back wheel. Sage advice.
I did actually have a SRAM NX 11spd rear mech that was left in the largest sprocket for about a year and had completely lost all spring/return tension when I tried to start using it again. Since then I try and remember to drop it down a few but mostly forget and haven't had the same problem again so it was probably just borked in another way.
That’s one of the things I did learn from Jim – always shift into smallest cog before taking off the back wheel. Sage advice.
To be honest, if you need telling that, maybe stay away from bike maintenance 😉
To be honest, if you need telling that
To be honest, if you read me being told that back in the 90s as needing to be told it, maybe stay away from the English language 😛
To be honest, if you read me being told that back in the 90s as needing to be told it, maybe stay away from the English language 😛
Just pulling your leg princess xx
TLDR,
But a spring doesn't care whether its left compressed, stretched or at rest. As long as its elastic limits aren't exceeded, then its properties won't change!
I did actually have a SRAM NX 11spd rear mech that was left in the largest sprocket for about a year and had completely lost all spring/return tension when I tried to start using it again
Did it? Or, more likely, did the linkages seize?
In order for a spring to no longer be a spring you have to do stuff at the atomic scale to change its properties, be that thermal, chemical or radiological. Just putting it away dirty will do none of those barring some surface rust unless it's being kept in a damp, salty ejvironment (as in sea spray rather than a bit of static road salt).
Whichever one I finished in
Smallest chainring, biggest sprocket.
Disclaimer - I live at the top of a hill