How To: Adjust Shimano Rear Derailleurs
Why Bicycles Stack Exchange recommends it
Bicycles Stack Exchange answerers point people to it when someone has poor or skipping rear shifting on a Shimano drivetrain and needs a clear walkthrough of derailleur adjustment.
Recommended by 6 people across 7 different months, 2013 to 2020.
What it is
A five-minute how-to from Art's Cyclery in which pro mechanic Daniel Slusser shows how to adjust a Shimano mechanical rear derailleur. It covers the basic tuning steps such as cable tension, limit screws and indexing, shot in a bike shop setting.
What people said
Recommends Vorac · 2013-10 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “How do I know the model of my Shimano Torney SIS Index Rear Derailleur, I have a Vertical Henox T3 bike?”
Indeed. However, dangers can always be straightened, as it seems [LINK] . Derailleur adjustment explained well here [this video] .
Recommends ynnekkram · 2015-05 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “How do I tune up the shifters/derailleurs on my mountain bike?”
These 2 videos from Art's Cyclery on YouTube will cover everything you need, they've helped me a great amount with my own Shimano chainset.
Recommends user21245 · 2015-08 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “Shimano 105 rear shifting issues”
Chris- first culprit is the barrel adjuster. New cables tend to stretch. As a result, small adjustments need to be made to cable tension to keep shifting 100% dialled in. Doing this at home is fairly simple, and there are many great tutorials online about how to do this yourself, here is a link to a great video [this video] from Art's Cyclery. if you still have trouble dialling in your shifting the next most likely culprit is a slightly bent derailleur hanger. This can actually be a quick and cheap fix at a bike shop, as they have a tool to bend it back into alignment (instead of totally replacing the hanger). In summary, try watching the video, and if you still have trouble try visiting a new sh
Recommends Zippy The Pinhead · 2015-09 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “Problems with front derailleur shifting on an inexpensive bike”
I'm sure you're a better judge of how effective your LBS employees are than people on an Internet forum, but in my experience it isn't uncommon to find some LBS employees are not very enthusiastic about working on bikes they view unfavorably for whatever reason: too old, too inexpensive, and so forth. Some think that working on an inexpensive bike is like polishing a turd, and I have run into more than a few who view it that way. If the bicycle is similar to this one [LINK] , I would encourage you to check out some YouTube videos regarding derailleur tuning: Tuning a front derailleur [LINK] Tuning a rear derailleur [this video]
Recommends Zippy The Pinhead · 2015-10 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “Adjusting Gear Actuation”
I'm not sure what you're comparing the effort to, but typically the front derailleur requires more cable pull to actuate, in comparison to shifting in the rear. Adjusting Shimano Front Derailleurs [LINK] Adjusting Shimano Rear Derailleurs [this video] It could be that you need a bit of slack removed from the cable, but without photos, it's hard to say. Front shifting explained [LINK]
Recommends klarriv · 2016-02 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “Bike won't shift at all”
You should look at your barrel adjuster on your rear derailleur. During those three years your cable tension probably loosen up. Here is one of my favourite videos on how to readjust your rear derailleur
Recommends cdonner · 2020-07 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “Shimano shifter neither reaching top nor bottom gear”
If you don't have it, download a Shimano rear derailleur manual and follow the procedure for adjusting the limits, or follow one of the many Youtube videos, like this one . The process is the same for most models. The limit screws control how far the derailleur moves in or out.
Cites Village · 2017-07 · Bicycles Stack Exchange · on “What could be preventing my bicycle from shifting gears?”
I recently purchased a second-hand bicycle. I found that the back wheel was not spinning freely, and was rubbing against the disk break, so I adjusted the position of the wheel to the right. After this adjustment, my bicycle could no longer shift to all of the back gears. It has 8 gears in the back, but it could only reach the 2nd largest gear. It has Shimano rear derailleurs. It has microSHIFT twist-type shifters. It uses metal cables for shifting. I found an on-line videos [this video] and spend an hour of trial and error adjusting the B-tension adjustment, barrel adjustment, and "L" and "H" screws. None of my results seemed to lead anywhere. I found that if I pushed the derailleur manually, it