Bike front derailleur
I bought a bike from EBay. It has decent components, but they seem mashed together incompatibly. My front derailleur doesn’t shift properly.
I tried adjusting the front derailleur, with little success. The clearance to the big ring is always than 1mm (too little).
A mechanic told me that my front derailleur is for a double-ring crankset, and therefore incompatible with my triple-ring. However, I’m not sure whether the mechanic is right. The derailleur is a Shimano FD-2203, the manual of which suggests it can work with a triple-ring.
Here are the components:
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Front derailleur: Shimano FD-2203.
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Rear derailleur: Shimano Ultegra RD-6600.
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Chainrings: Shimano SuperGlide with 52, 42 and 30 teeth. (They’re marked “Shimano SG A-52-42-30”.)
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Cassette: Shimano CS-5600, 10-speed.
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Shifters: Shimano 105 “FlightDeck” ST-5600.
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Bottom bracket: marked “Shimano, EE, Japan VIA, BC.1.37, 68”.
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Frame:
- The seller said “I think it’s made by Toyo”, but the frame lacks markings suggesting this.
- It has the frame number “CM3280024”.
- It’s marked “Aluminum Kinesis 6061”.
There is a mixture of different Shimano series here: 2203, 6600, 5600.
From the manuals, the main “incompatibilities” I noticed are:
- The shifters (ST-5600) want either FD-5600 or FD-5603 front derailleur, but mine is FD-2203!
- The front derailleur (FD-2203) wants ST-3303 shifters, but mine are ST-5600!
- The front derailleur (FD-2203) wants 24 gears, but I have 30!
- The front derailleur (FD-2203) wants RD-2200 rear derailleur, but mine is RD-6600!
The front derailleur looks like the impostor, so maybe I should replace that - but what with?
The manual for the FD-5600 wants 20 gears, so that doesn’t work.
The manual for the FD-5603, suggested by the shifters, wants:
- ST-5600 shifters - OK!
- 30 gears - OK!
- Front chainwheel FC-5603 - ???
- Rear derailleur - RD-5600-GS - ???
- Front chainwheel tooth difference of 20 or less - NO, I have a difference of 22!
Is this the cause of my problems?
Here is a photo of the front derailleur:
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