When I started riding , there was this guy who was helping me a lot and he said that you should always keep the chain in the smallest cog when you’re storing the bike so the spring is not always tensed.
My question is: a) is this true? I do this all the time and it’s not a big deal, just curious. b) even if true, is this still relevant for electronic derallieurs?
In the era of mechanical drivetrains, the small/small (chainring/cog) approach served to preserve the elasticity and tension of the shift cable, in instances where the cable is at their slackest. Some year derailleurs actually had the slackest cable tension at the largest cog.
The spring in the parallelogram is usually significantly more robust, and as such, it’s less prone to wearing out, ime.
I’m not entirely sure yet, if the same logic holds true though for electronic systems, but I’ve seen the 1 or 2 older derailleurs, where a new spring markedly improved shifting response. It’s made me leave my electronic groupsets in the small/small setting as well (though current gen Dura Ace RDs limit you to the 3rd smallest cog, when the front chainring is the smaller one.
From my own experience, I could never detect any change in the function of a Campy Record 10 Spd RD over 15 years. From a materials and engineering point of view, I don’t think any creep in the spring would change the spring rate from linear to non-progressive.
I assume RD springs are linear, but even if they’re not, I think if you graphed the spring force vs spring stretch, any creep would just cause the graph to shift down a bit, not change the type of curve in the graph. All that is just horribly worded way to say that if there is a little creep in the spring over time, you can likely make up for it by increasing cable tension a bit.
I don’t do small/small because that’s cross-chaining, but I usually drop to the small chainring & middle of the cassette as I’m rolling in at the end of a ride. Probaly doesn’t make much difference to the cable or springs but it costs nothing to do.