The offending frayed cable, from the most recent episode. I don’t have a camera with the capacity to take a good photo of small items.
3rd frayed rear derailleur cable leading to catastrophic failure on 2nd bike with Tiagra in the last 10 months. This is ridiculous. I had to add “check cables” every three months to my Google calendar, and will now waste a few dollars replacing them every 6 months like clockwork to prevent the un-fun experience of 2-speed cycling all the way home. I will have to seriously consider non-Shimano options for future upgrades…
Maybe it’s time for friction shifters? I like the Shimanos.
Is it shifting okay when this happens? Are there shards of glass up inside your shifter? Do you shift 30x as much as a typical person? This is not normal.
Both sets are from the same year (i think, ebay procured parts are a little sketchy), which makes me think it was a lousy batch / design flaw. Apparently newer ones aren’t so bad. Maybe older ones aren’t so bad either?
I have been rolling my bicycle in superglue and broken glass to toughen up before a ride…. but I thought everyone did that?
maybe the cables are the problem not the RD?
Tiagra ain’t DA but I’ve had good luck with it on my folder/commuter
Both sets of Tiagra are from the last year they were routed externally. The cables have all been pretty random — different bulk cables from different LBS’s and maybe one may have snuck in from an Internet supplier. I’ve had better luck with my commuter than with my road bike — but the commuter gets less shifting and (in the summer) has lower milage than my road bike.
The newer Tiagra has internal routing for both brake and shifting, and the design seems to make more sense, and I’ll probably consider it in the future.
According to my non-extensive Google search, there are a handful of other complaints about this particular vintage of Tiagra. I think I’m just a little unlucky to have it on both of my bicycles at the same time, and unlucky to realize that it was probably a systemic issue at the exact same time that the warrantee-able set of the two’s warrantee expired. Tiagra is no DA but it’s not junk-shop material, and it doesn’t exactly cost chump-change– I don’t want to replace major non-drive components very often because I am not a millionaire…
New Housings?