What is your trainer set up?

CycleOps Fluid II. I bought it off Fred Flintstone when he retired.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

I had the same problem on a CAAD4 a long time ago. It seemed to be caused due to flex in the bottom bracket when the bike was in the trainer. Look down and see how much it moves when you're trying to shift. I no longer remember the exact solution. I think it was to tune the front derailleur with the bike in the trainer and then make sure it's didn't throw the chain when not in the trainer.

Which rear gear are you in when you're trying to shift into the big ring? Does it matter if you shift from the mid-gear in your cassette?

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

I like this suggestion; it's actually what I was thinking as well. I didn't want to suggest it though because it implies I'm just. to. strong. And everything was fine the 5 winters I've had this bike before this one.

Anyway, I'm going to run with this. Still don't know what the solution is though :-)

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

From the middle of the cassette it doesn't work at all; from the smallest or second-smallest cog it works sometimes.

What I should try is see how it works under light load; the way the Fluid II power curve is I really only need the big ring for >350W efforts, so that's when I try to shift: when preparing for a max-effort interval for example. At that point I would typically be doing close to or over 300W already. I should check what happens if I try to shift doing 150W or so.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

In theory the tension on the chain should not matter.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

But when the power on the pedals is higher, the bottom bracket flex will be bigger as well,

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

I always soft pedal a rev to shift up when on the trainer. More necessary on my early SRAM vs newer 105.

Fixed the same problem on my GFs bike by switching to Sram chainrings. YAW derailleurs seem to work best with YAW chainrings. Didn't have problems on my bike with 10spd Sram rings and 11spd mech, but upgraded to YAW Red rings when upgraded to ETAP.

BTW, pull the trigger on ETAP. Love it!

Really? That would explain it, I guess - I installed the Shimano crankset last year (because I went with shorter cranks). I had a Rotor set before.

I'm not really keen on getting yet another crankset, and I assume those Red chainrings won't fit on Shimano cranks, right? Shimano has that non-standard 4-bolt pattern...

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

1. Indexing the front and rear and ensuring proper cable tension are exactly the same thing.
2. If the chain fell off the cluster then the end stops have not been set correctly.
3. Your chain is probably worn out.
4. The cranks you have will work fine with the rest of your setup.
5. You obviously haven't got a clue how to set it up, get somebody who does to look at it.

Sounds like it's not set up properly, and possibly wear and tear too.


When you say "just will not go" what do you mean? That description is not much use for trouble shooting purposes.
Does the mech move? Does it push against the the chain but fail to move it? Does the chain skip or just stay exactly where it is? When you change gears in the stand and trainer when not under load, do you use the exact same gear combos? Are your limit screws set? Do your chainrings visibly wobble under load?

I reckon you just don't have enough travel on the front derailleur and your rear derailleur outer limit screw is not set correctly. Just because you can get away with it unloaded, doesn't mean it's right.

Derailleurs and gears changes don't work by magic. What they do is pretty basic. They push or pull the chain from one chainring or sprocket, to an adjacent one by brute force. You can see all the parts moving, so it's pretty easy to figure out what's wrong even if you don't know how to put it right, and the latter is easy enough too. A 3 minute youtube video is enough to get you up to speed.

What works on the stand doesn't always translate to the road (or trainer). ...Happens to me often enough.

I have to assume two things here:
1. The derailleur height is ok.
2. The Yaw FD has been aligned properly at initial installation (...It's not the same as Shimano)

If the chain is dropping to the inside, there is an issue with the low limit screws.

If the chain is not shifting up to the big ring, there is either an issue with cable tension, or the H limit screw, or a combination of both.

You've got both, so you've got to start from scratch.

Un-tension the cable, fix the L-limit first and then address cable tension and H limit.

I'm guessing that your L-limit screw is 'off', but you've compensated with excess cable tension. The result is that it 'appears' to function normally on the stand, but problems emerge in normal conditions.

1. Terminology. Gotcha. I claim English As A Second Language ignorance :-)
2. Well I thought I did. I have redone the procedure and see if it works better now. The chain falling off was actually a one time thing, hasn't happened before.
3. It's getting there, but not totally worn out. Right between 0.25 and 0.5 on my little Park Tool gauge thingy. I'll replace it soon, mkay?
4. Good to know. I did some research and my FD definitely predates the Yaw technology.
5. Harsh, and not impossible. I've been doing my own maintenance for about 5 years now, but this one stumps me. And I'm here to learn.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Reason I'm so vague is because I don't understand what's going on. As I said, shifts fine on the stand, and I only have to lift the lever to about half way up. I go ride (in the small ring), and want to upshift to big ring. I pull the lever all the way up (to the point where there's now a little dent in the top of the housing part. The derailleur is moving and it sort of rubs the chain, just looks like it's not quite getting there.


Guys, I get it. I sound like an absolute dilettante who shouldn't be left alone with a hex key and a Schwinn. But as I said in another reply, I've been doing this for a number of years now. I've watched the Youtube videos. I've made my share of mistakes, but have been pretty careful with this one - doing everything properly, replacing my cables, re-setting screws, re-indexing RD. All the steps that worked before. But I will start over again, and see if that fixes it.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

I think it is. The chainring swap was like-for-like (53 for 53) so the height shouldn't have changed that much.


I have verified it's not a Yaw FD. It predates Yaw.

See my discussion with lyrrad above ^^^.


I don't think the limit screw is off. I checked a number of times but will try again from start.

Anyway, thanks for your advice all.

(trudges off to workshop)

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Wait.... it's 11s AND it's not 'Yaw'? I could be wrong, but I thought that Yaw was introduced with 11s(?). Are you using a 10s FD with an otherwise 11s drivetrain?

Inevitably, the issue is somewhere in the setup. Not enough actuation is happening at the front derailleur to shift into the big ring under load. If your limit screws are fine, my next advice would be to add cable tension to increase the amount of movement of the FD during the shifts.

I think we have a winner. It's a 10 speed FD; I now remember that when I put the 11sp in I consulted Dr. Google who told me it would "probably" work with the 10sp FD. I have had previous good experience (on other bikes) upgrading from 9sp to 10sp without upgrading the FD, so I decided to roll the dice. I completely forgot that that wasn't as guaranteed this time around.

So yeah, my bike is telling me to upgrade. I guess it's eTap time.

Thanks again all.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Glad that was sorted. The change in widths of the FD cage (in combination with a slightly narrower chain) is likely creating these issues.

I used to own a P4 and had contemplated going electronic. I came to the conclusion that eTap was the only way (or rather, easiest) way to go. Have fun!

LOL

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http://www.jt10000.com/

Have you checked to see if your cassette is loose? Had the same issue, tightened the cassette and it was fine on the trainer.

I would think you would still be able to get it to work. The outer chain width difference between 10 and 11 speed is extremely small. FDs have pretty good adjustability, and if you can't even get the chain to move onto the big ring, you're setup is much farther off than the difference in outer chain width.

My guess is that you have a cable tension problem. Couple things I would check.

1. Make sure you have the cable routed through the FD correctly. Speaking from experience, I routed my cable through the FD pinch bolt the wrong way once before. The result was the same...when I threw my shift lever, the cable was pulling the proper amount, but because it was not leveraging the FD properly, the FD wasn't moving as far as it should have. Thus the shifts from the small ring to the big ring did not work well under load no matter how much I opened up the high limit screw.

2. If the cable is routed through the FD properly, make sure your overall cable routing is solid. If there is any play in how the cable, housing, or ferrules are sitting then that's possible cable pull you are losing...which then means your FD doesn't move as much as it needs to. On my old road bike that had external routing, there was a plastic cable guide under the bottom bracket that I didn't notice was damaged. So every time I shifted the FD, the cable guide would move slightly, that would then impact the cable's ability to pull the FD the intended amount. Replaced the cable guide, and it was fine after that.

Of course...electronic would remove the need for cables...so there's that.

Check that the front derailleur hanger is not cracked and that any rivits, glue etc are holding firm.
Check derailleur height, as low as possible without hitting anything.
Check front derailleur is actually lined up properly with the chain ring, this seems to be something that regularly stumps people due to the various shapes engineered into the cage.