Hi,
I have SRAM XX1 on my 2018 Whyte and suffered the dreaded “stick in the spokes” the other month. That managed to break a few spokes and the lower jockey wheel which I’ve just got fixed, but now I have shifting issues (not unsurprisingly). It all started on my test ride after fixing the wheel. I got about 1 km into the ride and then the chain got caught between the lower jockey wheel and the cage. This happened every few meters so I gave up and freewheeled back. With the bike back in the stand I could see that in the higher toothed gears (32T+) the angle of the lower jockey wheel was such that it was not parallel to the chain – hence the locking issue. Obvious! I hear you cry – the stick incident has obviously bent the hanger! That was my thought too and so out came the hanger alignment tool. There was perhaps a slight bend to the hanger, but then again maybe not. I tweaked it and tested again – still an issue.
As it happens I have a newer GX derailleur on another bike, so I whipped that off and replaced the XX1 on the Whyte with the GX. A (not so quick) test ride showed that it performed flawlessly. That confirmed my thoughts about the hanger, so I set about making one small change at a time to try to find the component(s) that were causing the issue. I changed components in this order:
- New jockey wheels from the XX1 into the GX – still no issue
- Back of the cage from the XX1 into the GX – still no issue
- XX1 (fully reassembled) back on the Whyte – Issue
This makes me think that the main derailleur body (parallelogram?) is at fault. This leads me onto the point of this post – a question…
What, if anything, can I test next to help diagnose and fix the issue?
Thanks for getting this far. I look forward to hearing what you have to suggest (other than to buy a new derailleur).
Mike
