Short cage wide range derailleur?

[sethschmautz]

Since I'm after unicorns these days. . .

I got a set of wheels from a Mag for my 6yo daughter's 20" mountain bike. The goal was to be able to run a wide range 10 speed cassette (11-42) to make climbing a little easier on our mountain bike rides. I swapped out the wheels, discs, cassette, shifter (Deore 10 speed) and derailleur (SLX 11 speed). It's all working fine, but I don't love how close the cage comes to her tire and the ground.

Is there such a thing as a derailleur that can handle up to a 42t max cog size with a short cage?

Seth

[kalisto]

Not that I know of. Generally speaking with modern derailleur design is that the length of the cage is there to take up the slack in the cable to account for large cassettes.

You could look at something like road link from wolftooth which allows a smaller road derailleur to a max 40t ish tooth cassette. but would then need a flat bar road shifters or a tanpan to convert the ratio....

[Robik]

Might be spendy, but you could try to replace front cog to something smaller and get lower range cassette with short cage derailleur. I guess that's the only way to keep the current gear range.

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[grabtindy]

Saint 10 speed short cage maxes out at 36t (published). No idea on real world fit, but it might go on a hardtail.
Otherwise you probably can't get shorter than a gs (medium) cage M675 or M785.

Can you see if your current SLX is the GS or SGS cage? If the latter you have some room to improve.

[sethschmautz]

Saint 10 speed short cage maxes out at 36t (published). No idea on real world fit, but it might go on a hardtail.
Otherwise you probably can't get shorter than a gs (medium) cage M675 or M785.

Can you see if your current SLX is the GS or SGS cage? If the latter you have some room to improve.

This is why I love this place.

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[evdog]

I'd second the smaller front chainring and 36T cassette. Only problem might be finding a ring that fits whatever crankset that is.

[Dantheman]

That's a non-replaceable chainring, so that idea is out.

I got a short cage GX to just work with a 32x11-42 setup on a similar bike. With the 30t ring on the Cujo you should have a little more wiggle room. Hardtail helps too since there's no chain growth. That said, if it's working good now I would just leave it. Those largest cogs will only get used pedaling uphill really slow so ripping the derailleur off is relatively unlikely despite its proximity to the ground. If it ends up happening anyway then buy a new one with shorter cage.