5 Minute Gear Adjust How To Set Up Your Mountain Bike Gears Correctly

This is a nice, simple video about tuning your gears fast. I'm going to show you everything you need to know about your front derailleur, your rear derailleur, and both your shifters in order to get your gear set up in just five minutes. Firstly, why would you want to tune your gears? You could have a new bike like this one. You could be taking advantage of great-priced bikes at this time of year. You could get one for Christmas, or perhaps you've just ridden your bike a lot and it needs a little bit of adjustment. Just think that all the adjustments you can make, they are compensators essentially. As things happen over time on a bike, if your derailleur bends, you need to take up some adjustment for that. We're going to run through this process really quickly, show you what everything does, and how you make those adjustments. Bit of an explainer first, you've got your front shifter here, you have your back shifter here. Both shifters have barrel adjusters on them. They offer taking up the slack in the cable line, something you will need to adjust your gears. Here is your front derailleur at the front of the bike here. This one has two chainrings, therefore you have two gears you can change. It has the cable tension clamp on there. It has an inner and an outer limit screw for aligning it in that inner and outer chainring position. That's about all you need to know about that front derailleur. Moving on to the rear derailleur, this is the far more crucial one that you use a lot more on a mountain bike, and it has a few more things. Accordingly, it's a parallelogram design. It's got two sprung wheels in here, a whole jockey cage. Now, you have three major points of adjustment with that. You have limit screws to adjust the high gear, which is your smallest one, or the low gear, which is the big one, to set those limits of the movement. You have the B screw, also known as B tension, which adjusts the height of the upper jockey wheel in relation to the size of the cassette that you're running. The cassette is the name for the sprockets on the back. You also have the cable tension adjustment, which you pretty much set and then you fine-tune it at the shifter on the barrel adjuster, and you have a clutch. This is essentially to add tension to the chain to help eliminate chains dropping off. Just before we make any physical adjustments to the front or rear derailleurs here, I just want to explain something to you. It's quite common these days to have a single chainring on the front, also known as a one-by system, in which case you don't have to worry about anything with the front derailleur, the only adjustments you make at the back. However, if your bike has two or three chainrings at the front, you do need to factor that in when making adjustments because in the extreme gears, let's just say the big one at the back and the big one at the front, that means the chain is crossing. There will be times where the chain may rub on your front derailleur. The same, small to small, those extremes. You're never going to get that completely perfect. What's important is you get most of your gears. We'll come back to that at the end once we've made basic adjustments and we've done the same on the rear. Starting with this front one, I'm going to shift it into the big chainring. I want to make sure that the outer plate is not contacting it at all. I've left the bike in the smallest gear at the back, so that's the highest gear. That gives me basically the chain the furthest away from the bike as possible. What I want to have is the bit of daylight between the outer plate, keep it as close to that as possible. That also allows then for the chain to move its maximum range at the back there to give it hopefully enough room. Looking straight down here, I can actually see that it's very, very close. I'm going to make a slight adjustment to that. The best way to make that adjustment is to look completely down on the cage. You can see as you make it, it just moves. We're talking like a small amount here. I'm just going to drop it down and make sure it clears. That's pretty good. For the moment, I'm happy with that front derailleur. Let's move on to the back because that is making some noise. The same thing applies to the rear derailleur as the front. I'm going to make sure that the barrel adjuster is fully wound off so it's basically got no tension or excessive tension on the cable. What I can see here is the cable is a little bit baggy. I'm already assuming I'm going to need to pull this through, but I'm just going to check by trying to shift it up one gear. As you see, it's not going, which means there's not enough cable tension. I also notice it's actually rubbing slightly. This is a good opportunity just before pulling that cable in just to look line of sight all the way down the gears and make the adjustment of the limit screws. In particular, the limit for the high gear, which is the small sprocket. Again, depending on which derailleur you have, sometimes it will be an Allen key like it is on the Shimano one, and sometimes it will require a screwdriver to make the adjustment. Now, just a case of lining up by eye and not indexed as such. That feels like that's about right. There we go. It's nice and quiet. Now, I just need to take that cable tension in and hopefully that'll be all good. Now, the key here is to just nip it up. You don't actually want to be pulling cable through. You're just pulling it taut. Just remember, taut, not tight. There is a difference. Any final adjustments can be made with the barrel adjuster, which is at the shifter end. The reason it's at the shifter end is that you can make those adjustments in the saddle if your gears aren't quite playing ball. Now, in theory, this will be very close now. Actually, pretty perfect, to be honest. Now, indexing of gears should correlate one click, one gear change. There we go. I'm also paying attention now to the front derailleur, just to make sure that these all line up and there's nothing rubbing. Like I said, depending on if you have a double or a triple at the front, there will be a few gears where you just can't get away from a little bit of rubbing on that front derailleur. Now, that's pretty good. Slight rubbing in the extreme, big to big, but you shouldn't really be using that gear. If you need a gear that big at the back, then you should step it down the front and then come down the cassette a bit. I would say that is acceptable. You're never going to be in a gear of that kind, so we are good. There we go. They are the basic adjustments you need to make. Just remember, small adjustments, and you can make more of them if need be. Don't go cranking around on your screwdriver or your Allen key set and messing it all up. Just think logically about it. Cable tension is responsible for changing of the gears. The limit screws just allow the range of it to be set. These are all factors by looking down the derailleur, down the line of sight. That's what you're doing here. Now, in case you're wondering what the clutch and the B screw or the B tension do, the clutch literally adds more tension onto your drivetrain, onto the chain. When you're going over bumpy ground, it stops it coming off, or at least reduces the chances of that, and it can make it a bit more silent. The B screw, though, does have a bit more of a crucial part. It hasn't needed adjusting on this bike, so I hadn't mentioned it until now. The way you check your B tension screw is have your chain in the largest sprocket, so that's your lowest gear at the back. That means using your thumb all the way in. You want to make sure there is some daylight between the upper jockey wheel and the bottom side of that sprocket. Now, it does vary depending on how many gears your bike has. Some manufacturers like SRAM make a little plastic guide, and you literally line it up underneath, and you adjust the B screw which adjusts the height. The lower it is, basically, the harder it is going to be to change gear, but it gives you more clearance. The higher it is, the more chance it is it's going to foul on those sprockets. However, the bike will naturally change gear a lot easier than that, so there's a fine line between getting it right. This can be anything from 3 millimeters to about 11 millimeters gap depending on your particular orientation. That's about all you need to know with playing with your gears. Just think small adjustments and think logically. Well, there you go. That was a really quick tune-up on the gears on this bike. Basically, that is how you do it. Just remember the following things. Cable tension is key to shift the gears, and your limit screws just adjust the range of where your gears are. If your derailleur perhaps has bent in time, you can adjust to it with the limit screws to a degree, but if it's really bent, it could foul a part of the bike, so take into account that sort of thing. There we go. That's all the adjustments you really need to do to keep your gears going. For a couple more advanced videos looking at this stuff to master indexing and get everything, every little detail perfect, click down here. For changing all your cables, click up here. As always, give us a huge thumbs up here at GMBN Tech if you love what we do. If you've got any suggestions, let us know in the comments underneath. Hit the subscribe button and hit the bell. Cheers, guys.