front derailluer - chainset teeth distance?

[02GF74]

shimano front derailleurs come with a little transparent sticker that shows how far the cage should be away from the teeth - 1 mm or so.

now my friend managed to wreck a deore front shifter - I suggested an LX replacement from CR but when I cane to fit it, itsat a lot higher than that.

reason being that the weld on the seat tube for rear suspension prevents the clamp from being fitted lower down.

so I went to look at my bikes and all have been set as above - I think I fitted them - but one gary fisher had the cage about 10 mm or more about the outer ring and looking at my commuter Saracen mtb, this has that too (I did replace the front derailluer on that one a couple of year back, grrrr...).

now the funny thing is, the bikes that are out of spec. work perectly well so my question is how critical is the fittting?

The BH (friend's mtb) cam fitted so too must have had the derailleur too high.

Anyways, looking at the deraillers, some have the clamp above the cage whereas others have the clamp below - I sorted her problem by taking the former off one of mine and fitting her one to mine. (my one was pretty new - I hadn't even pulled off the sticker!!)

Now that I have spotted this, I guess I am gonna have to correct it on the GF and S bikes else it will bug me ...

so that you have an idea what I am on about, note the small gap between the lower edge of the outer cage and the chin teeth - and the sticker (woo hoo - found piccy of one)

 

[nuovo_record]

i did some work on a friends old dawes and the chain was more times than not jamming between the mech and the ring.
so i moved it a long way down to about a coupld of mm from the ring and all is fine.

 

[02GF74]

well an update - I dropped the mech on the saracen, as per above, and the cage was fouling on the chain ring so had to mive it up. it sits lower than it used to but more than 1 mm.

som I can only conclude that this is not applicable to older mechs, although that one is no more than 5 years old.