Sram red RD black ed. inner cage

[Hpag05]

Hey guys, my RD inner cage snapped and it seems impossible to find a replacement at a LBS with out buying the whole cage or doing a crash replacement.
I see fairwheels carries an aftermarket one and I was wondering how reliable they are, and what has been your experience with it.
here is my broken RD

[Ypsylon]

How in the world did you do that?

I've never heard of a broken fibre-lyte inner cage, but then again people don't call me when they break their stuff.

Just looking at the cost of a fibre-lyte one and a new rd, I don't see how you could go wrong, though.

[Fibre-Lyte]

The usual way that a mech plate breaks like that is when the chain has derailed from either the pulley or the chainring and the chain has been pedalled through. Standard OEM carbon mech plates are very stiff but quite brittle as they are manufactured from UD carbon fibre usually. In my experience, although obviously bias, our plates are a lot more durable. They will still break if you hit them hard enough though!

This is where it gets more complicated. Looking at your derailleur, that's not a standard Red plate, the profile is different. I guess they altered it on the black edition. You'll need to check the distance between the pulley centres, but also check the pulley bolts to see if they're M4 or M5. M5 is the 'standard' that Shimano, Campag and most o the current Sram range uses. However, Sram do use M4 bolts on some of their derailleurs and our standard plates won't fit those. If your nt sure send me a pm or email me at work (sales@fibre-lyte.co.uk) and we can work it out. If the standard red plate that we do will fit, then you'll be able to obtain one through our hosts.

[Boonen]

I'm fairly sure this one has the M4 bolt as well but check to see, it's the one holding the upper pulley, the left one in your picture. Just unscrew both the pulley wheels and if the bolts are different then the thinner one is the M4 bolt.

FL, why wouldn't that fit your standard plates? Is it the hole distance? The bolt should fit just fine (maybe a bit loose?) as it only has to go through, it's the (lower) M5 that's bolted onto the plate?

[Fibre-Lyte]

The lower bolt is possibly the problem. Certainly on the Sram Apex the lower bolt is an M4 and our inserts as standard are for M5. I can't decide from that photo whether the lower bolt is M4 or M5. If it's M5 then yes, you're quite right, regardless of the upper bolt it will fit. However, if the lower bolt is M4 then there could be an issue (although I think I still have a very small amount of M4 inserts at work)

[Boonen]

There you go, I didn't know they had rd's with both bolts being M4. Cheers

[Fibre-Lyte]

I didn't until someone sent us the Sram Apex plate

I want to add that to our product list but we usually have to order the inserts a thousand at a time and I don't think we'll sell enough of the Apex plate to warrant the M4 inserts. We could simply thread the carbon itsef but that's not a great idea, the only save is that there's little force on the pulley bolt threads in use, but it would be easy for someone to strip carbon threads if they torqued the bolt up too much.

What's made me ask the questions about this particular plate is that the top half of the profile looks exactly the same shape as the Apex one.

[Fibre-Lyte]

I've just this morning been sent a picture of a new-ish Sram Rival plate and it looks the same profile as this one. I guess that somewhere along the line the shape has been changed. Hopefully the customer with the Rival plate will be sending it to us and I'll be able to check to see what diameter the threads are on that one.