Road Bike Front Derailleur Cable Tension
This tension must overcome the fairly strong return spring in the derailleur.
Road bike front derailleur cable tension. Chain shifts slowly or not at all to largest front chainring. I show how to install and adjust a front derailleur including removing the old front derailleur. On your particular bike the barrel adjuster is inline with the shifter cable near the handlebars. If your question is whether it s normal for there to be significant tension on the shift cable when the front derailleur is in the outer position the answer is yes.
The outward cage of the front derailleur should sit as close to the big ring as possible without making contact. Cable tension and limit setting. This is a road bike but the process is the same on a mountain. Indexing and managing cable tension in the front and rear derailleurs when time and miles have got the drive train shifting less than perfect.
The shift lever and front derailleur need to be fully returned to their starting positions in order to take all tension off the shift cable so you can remove any slack. Inspect and correct cage rotation as necessary check l limit screw setting. Sometimes the cable and or the housing is ruined and will need to be replaced. Front l limit screw too loose or rotation of cage is off.
Front derailleur cable tension too slack h limit screw too tight and or rotation of cage is off. And if you re on a road bike. The gap between the lower edge of the front derailleur cage and the top of the outer chainring teeth should be 1 3mm for optimal performance. Cable tension and derailleur position are usually the culprits and both can be adjusted relatively easily.
Before you get too worked up about cable tension it s vital to know that your front derailleur is positioned accurately. Also a bent or broken front derailleur or shifter will require replacement. To set your front derailleur outer limit screw shift into the large chainring and the rear derailleur into the smallest cog. I also install a new shifter cable.
Adjust the cable tension by loosening the cable anchor pinch bolt use a cable puller tool to pull the slack from the cable before retightening the cable anchor pinch bolt.