Adjusting my derailleurs: 'Never touch those'

Yesterday I learned a valuable lesson about my bike: never adjust the front derailleur myself.

After having a routine tune-up last month, I noticed the chain was rubbing against the derailleur cage while on the largest front cog. Having played with the cage position on my worthless Giant Iguana in Huntington Beach, I knew it was possible to make a slight adjustment using the screws on the front derailleur. All I needed to do was move the cage outside a tiny bit, so after watching a couple instructional videos on YouTube to refresh my memory, I busted out a screwdriver and confidently went to work. However, when I turned the high limit screw to move the cage outside, the cage did not budge. Hmm. So I played with the low limit screw to see if that would help. It didn’t.

Thankfully, though, I did not mess things up that much; the gears shifted well enough afterward, but the chain still rubbed against the cage. Annoyed by both the rubbing and my incompetence, I made another attempt to adjust the derailleur on Wednesday. I mean, it looked simple enough — but apparently not simple enough for me. At one point I had the alignment so messed up that the chain did not shift down from the middle to the inside cog. I eventually managed to adjust the derailleur enough where the bike was rideable, but I admitted defeat and took it to Geoff’s Bike and Ski yesterday morning.

“What did you try to adjust?” the mechanic asked after lifting my bike onto a stand. I pointed to the cage. “What did you try to adjust it with?” I touched the screws. “Never touch those,” he said.

He worked his magic and did not charge me anything, an awesome perk for having bought my bike there — and for being an idiot.