Tinkerers' Corner - Shimano RD Cage Swap - LIVE FEED!

Woz

Old School Grand Master
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Definitely know I'm not the first or last to do this. The motive is to get two of my builds sorted
without dashing out to Ebay - my parts box had two RDs in the right colour (yes, I can be a
real bike tart sometimes) but the specs are off with what I want to achieve.

Basically, I want a RD for a triple which should handle a 34T large sprocket, and another RD which
will go on a SS city beater or possibly a 1 x 9 set-up with a 26T large sprocket.

The start points are a Sora and Alivio RD, which are frankly a bit naff, but plenty usable for purpose, the
parallelogram slants looks good, so all the more reason to try.

At one point doing a cage swap required just a small allen key and 5 mins. Now with "progress"
a lot of the low end dross is composed of the plastic fantastic with immediate access to internal working gone.

Shimano have done this to deliberately just to infuriate us tinkerers and keep to a Walmart price point.

I'm not letting the lockdown lifting sway me away; I'm still going to waste stupid time indoors with old tat :LOL:
 

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The kettle is on

I have an 11spd 105 I want to play around with - 11spd is the devils work, I only go up to ten so the longer cage is going on something else.
 
*ook. Can't find my glasses and the neighbour wants to share a Pernod. :facepalm:

....will start in a mo!
 
Start by picking out the small and tight fitting plastic clip at the knuckle end of the RD
with a thin quality precision screw driver.
 

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In the slot is a circlip. Revolve it around so the open side of the circlip is facing you.

If you like fumbling and poking around in a dark slit this is for you.
 

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This I find the hard part. Push each end of the circlip down at the sametime. I went for the two
screwdriver approach in the end and didn't swear too much.
 

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There is a tiny slit in the rear of the knuckle facing the parallelogram where the circlip can just move out enough.

The last RD I did this, the circlip actually fell out and got mangled in the spring. :facepalm:
 

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At the moment I saw the circlip out enough in the tiny slit, I gave a bit of a pull on the cage and it was off.
 

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