Tweak of the day
After a couple of months of increasingly flaky behavior from the old Sram X-5 derailer, I finally replaced it with a new (and cheap. Don’t forget the cheap!) Shimano RD-3400. One obvious difference between it and the X-5 is the length of the cage; the X-5 is designed for your typical mountain bike gearing, so it can pull about 60 links of chain. The RD-3400 is meant for road gearing, and it pulls about 30 links.
If I had an superalpine double (42-28) on the front of the mlcm that would probably be too much for this new short-cage derailer to handle, but I don’t. And 21 links is well within the specs, even if the largest gear is ~1 inch larger diameter than it’s supposed to be.
It means I’ll have to retrain my learned shifting a bit, but I don’t have anything else with a 9-speed rear end, so it’s not as if I’ll confuse myself in the process.