I have a new bike with a SRAM AXS 2x drivetrain. I get chain drop every ride. Usually it happens when I am on a fast descent and quickly go into a steep climb—the scenario where I’m peddling hard in the big ring and then need to quickly shift to the little ring.
This is after years of using 11 speed Di2 setups where I do not think I ever dropped a chain. They were idiot proof.
The AXS setup feels more akin to an old mechanical setup, where you have to slow your cadence while easing through a half rotation, so the FD can place the chain on the smaller ring in front.
Has anybody had this same problem? I would love to hear that’s it just something that a small adjustment in the FD could fix. Or is it simply a matter of having to learn proper shifting technique?
I would put on a chain catcher either way, but it’s probably more of a setup issue (have ridden AXS for a number of years and it is pretty finicky, have found that a half turn on limit screws or the FD not being dead straight can cause issues)…SRAMs website has a bunch of info on proper setup (https://www.sram.com/en/sram/road/campaigns/troubleshooting-etap-axs-chain-drop) which I found, if followed…can stop any issues
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Just go back to di2
This is a constant problem with AXS , I’m amazed how every one just keeps buying it dispite this being a very well know problem
Even without the dropping issue di2 beats sram every time , it’s just sooooooo much smoother and worry free
Set and forget.
People keep saying that it has to be properly adjusted and fine tuned. Im sorry but the whole thing is just badly designed. I Had 4 different bikes with Di2 in the last 5 years and I had only one chain drop, and it was because the chain was already too worn out and not properly lubbed.
Half a year with a new bike, this time with Force AXS, and the first 3k km were fine, but after that its been terrible. I literally had 16 chain drops in the past month. Sometimes twice per ride. I took the bike to three different shops in hope some of them tuned the deraileur properly, and for the first week it works well, after that here we go again with chain drops. I installed a chain catcher and it prevents it from dropping to the inside, which slightly damaged my frame the first time, but now I have external chain drops which are starting to scratch the big ring. I already changed the chain too but its still happening. If the chain goes out and you switch fast to small ring the chain goes in the proper spot, but last time it pushed my deraileur to the outside so it started touching my cranks on every spin so I had to literally stop and fiddle around with that myself in the middle of a group ride. At least when this happens its on a flat/start of a downhill, without the chain catcher it was happening on every start of a climb which was annoying as hell
I love the ranges of sram, I dont care about the extra noise and I dont notice that its a bit slower than Shimano. But really, they just dont know how to design a damn front deraileur from my experience. Its a common issue with these groupsets and if you google a bit you will see that its happening to many people. Some say its a frame issue. Well Im riding a model that almost every LBS is selling it with SRAM for the past 2 years so I hope other customers doesnt have my same issues
Anyway, now im building a Tri bike and you can imagine what did I choose as my groupset. You can bet after that what am I going to do with sram on my road bike
Just go back to di2
This is a constant problem with AXS , I’m amazed how every one just keeps buying it dispite this being a very well know problem
Even without the dropping issue di2 beats sram every time , it’s just sooooooo much smoother and worry free
Set and forget
This.
My wife’s AXS bike drove me nutty and finally we sold the damn thing. I have 5 Di2 bikes now and she has 2. They aren’t comparable. We just don’t have Di2 issues. My oldest Di2 bike is 10 speed and maybe 30k miles. I had to replace a wire because it corroded and that is the worst issue I’ve dealt with.
To the OP. Get a chain catcher. Its the only thing that will fix this. Look at the grand tour cyclists on this system. They and their mechanics just put on the catcher.
Any of them, K-edge are good but even the generic ones you can find on amazon etc are fine. Once I have mine set up I have literally zero issues, did you go through the link I posted?
The front chain rings are now in second generation.
The original ones dropped chains as soon as they wore a little.
I now keep a spare set of original chainrings to use as comparison and if a bike comes in with these fitted I simply advise them to fit the new style.
So far this seems to cure the chain drop problem.
No amount of setup will fix the original rings once worn a little.
Any idea when the new rings were released? I got the bike in Fall 2021. Not sure when the existing rings were manufactured. Only have a few hundred miles on them, and the problem started early.
One thing that really helped some issues I was having with chain drop to the outside is setting the derailleur 2mm above the tallest tooth while in the small ring. The videos say 1-2, but I found it has to be 2mm exactly. Also, I put some clear adhesive tape on the crank arms to prevent scratches if it does launch the chain outboard, and the derailleur somehow knows I did this and is no longer interested in throwing the chain if it can’t scratch my red axs cranks. 😀😀 Another thing I noticed when I had the chain thrown outboard on a previous setup is that I shifted a few cogs in the rear at the same time as the front, so now I don’t do that. That said, the front der on sram is super finicky and maddening, but I really prefer the 1 button shifting. Di2 has too many buttons and I sometimes find myself hitting the wrong one.