So yesterday my derailleur on my 6 day old bike broke at just 41 road miles. Gave Erik’s a call and they said bring it and they would see what they could do. Got into Erik’s by 6p.m. was out of there by 7p.m. with a brand new SRAM X7 derailleur. I could not be more happy with their service. Not only did they take care of the bike (I did purchase it from them), but they upgraded me from my SRAM X4 to the X7. SWEEEET!!! I just returned from a 10 mile ride this morning and I love the new derailleur. It is so much smoother and “lighter” than the previous. Erik’s clearly exceeded my expectations. Within 12 hours of my bike breaking I was back out on the road biking. When Amy and I arrived home with my bike I proceeded to take a 7 mile bike ride, it was way to nice out at 57* to not go for a ride.
April 10, 2009
SRAM X4 Deraileur goes Kaboom!
So yesterday morning I went out for my normal a.m. bike ride which at this point is serving as training for the Ironman. At about 1.5 miles into my ride I headed up a small dirt path in the local park. As I did so I proceeded to shift into a low gear for climbing, or at least tried. My rear derailleur all of the just failed and stopped apply pressure to the chain allowing it to fall off. As you can see in the picture below.
Broken SRAM S4 Rear derailer
A quick evaluation of the situation at hand revealed I could not even ride the bike home in this condition without possibly causing further damage. As I am evaluating my options and what I have available in my backpack I realized I have a small bungee cord holding my hand held Garmin GPS to my handle bars. YAHTZEE!!! Spring tension has been lost from the derailleur and the bungee could provide a spring like tension. The result:
SRAM S4 rigged with bungee cord
“If the women don’t find you handsome, well at least they will find you handy” – Red Green Show.
So with this nice little rig I was able to make it back home the about half mile at a decent pace and still make it to work in plenty of time.