Is it time to upgrade or replace your rear derailleur? Do you sit awake at night worrying about what ‘tooth capacity’ is? Have you ever simply wanted to know absolutely everything there is to know about buying a rear derailleur or wondered ‘which rear derailleur do I need?’ If so, you’ve come to the right place.
While we don’t recommend you break out this hot derailleur chat at your next party, this is essential information if you’re looking to buy or upgrade a rear derailleur.
In this guide, we’ll take you through rear derailleur compatibility for both mechanical and electronic groupsets . We also explain key rear derailleur specs and tooth capacity.
This article only covers rear derailleurs. We have a separate guide dedicated to front derailleurs . Which brand of derailleur should I buy?
Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo are the three main players in the drivetrain market.
Microshift , Box, Rotor , FSA and others also make groupset components, but it would be beyond the scope of this article to cover all of these.
As a general rule of thumb, it’s best not to mix and match drivetrain components from different brands. While cranksets , chains and cassettes are mostly inter-compatible between brands, generally speaking, shifters and derailleurs aren’t.This is because Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo all use different cable pull ratios.Cable pull ratio is the amount a derailleur moves for every millimetre of cable pulled through by the shifter. Mixing parts with different cable pull ratios will result in very poor shifting.However, […]
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