front derailleur

Officially launched in 1988, Sram is a relatively young company with a lot of design ingenuity and the original maker of the Grip Shift. They’ve been making their way up through the bike component industry, proving themselves to be a reliable company providing a reliable product.

And they look good too.

They have also forged biking alliances with several companies, including RockShox, Quarq, Avid, Truvativ and Zipp.

So let’s start from the bottom up.

S-Series

 This is Sram’s entry level components group. Here you will find a series of parts which consist of brake levers, shifters, cassettes, chains, crankarms and derailleurs for road, cyclocross and track bikes. The series comes in 8, 9 and 10 speeds and even offer cantilever brakes from Avid. 

Quarq

How To Adjust a Mountain Bike Front Derailleur

Tools you will need:

allen key

lube - should lube pivot points while adjusting

Screwdriver

When Paul Vivie invented the derailleur system and gave us the francophone spelling in 1928, he no doubt realized that having a derailleur in the front as well as the rear would allow allow him to nearly double the number of gearing combinations his system delivered.

It also held the potential to increase frustration by an order of magnitude. The grinding!

You know how sometimes your gears don’t change with firm frankness? When they don’t snap into action like German watch works or have the precision of the pistons in an F1? Or even when they react like the voice automated system that understands “Constitution Hall” as “Congressional Balls”?

If this is the case, you may need to check your derailleurs.

As with anything, this complex procedure gets easier to figure out with time and practice.

So let’s go through the steps.

This is an early episode where Jim goes through parts of the bicycle.  Jim starts with the front wheel, rim, tire, tube, spokes and hub, then moves on to the fork and brake and brake calipers. 

Next he checks out the handlebars, brake levers, and bar tape.  On to the stem, and headset which transitions into the frame, which consists of the headtube, top tube, down tube, seat tube, chain stay and seat stay. 

Which brings us to the seatpost and saddle.  Moving on to the drivetrain made up of the crank, chain, cassette, rear derailleur and front derailleur.  What allows the crank to turn is the bottom bracket and that's pretty much what we're working with.  See you on the road, bitches!

Joe's much less suave, and much more annoying rendition of "Part's of a Bicycle":