Camp record rear derailleur tuning

[Rasmus]

That Proxxon stuff does look mighty familiar

Looking forward to seeing more pics from the progress!

[FelixOr]

Hi Rasmus,
i just ran into the first problems. Everything worked fine, until i started to work with the polsihing paste. It's very hard and brittle, and when i want to polish the surface, after i applied it, a thick layer of a grease-like substance appears.
What am i doing wrong?

Thanks

[Rasmus]

Proxxon recommends using one or two drops of oil to keep the paste manageable. The dark/black residue on the metal is perfectly normal. Try using the round filt pad piece from the polishing kit to remove it, and you'll get a nice, shiny surface

[FelixOr]

Cool, it works
Only problem now is, that i couldn't remove all of the deeper scratches in the surface. ... it's shiny now, but i want to get rid of the deep scratches. Will 400grit sandpaper be fine?

[Rasmus]

This is where your hard work will begin to eventually pay off. Yes, you'll need to go by hand to get a good base for the subsequent polishing. Begin with 400 grit, then 800 and so on. You'll know when to switch when you're unable to see anymore scratches left from the previous grit.

You'll be able to reach me through MSN later tonight for that "live chat support"

[FelixOr]

I think, i may dissapoint you with the result

[pinarellofan]

I'm not disappointed, Felix. Looks good. I was wondering though, is this for your cr1? Is the rest staying stealthy or are you planning on polishing more?

[Adrien]

That's the perfect topic Felix!!

I'll tune a little my next year bike but only with easy to do things like using alloy bolts for example.

[Rasmus]

I think, i may dissapoint you with the result

No, no not at all! It's a good start, and you're just beginning to get the hang of it. I would, however, recommend you to really start working with the blue silicarubberythingie bits to get the overall base for the shinejob.'

Hang in there! You're doing great

[FelixOr]

Thanks for the nice comments

@Pinarellofan: Yes, it's going on my Scott, and will be the only polsihed part. I just tried it out of curiousity.
We don't really lose the stealth look, do we?

@Adrien: Hehe, i can already see you ending up like me. Everything starts with a innocent little aluminium bolt, and some weeks later, your derailleur looks like mine, and your avatar says "OCD WW"


@Rasmus: I did use the blue silicarubbers, and they work great! I think i'm doing something wrong with the polish paste....

Another big problem is, that there are a lot of curves and bumps on the surface, because i wasn't careful enough when doing the sanding...

[Ripley451]

Its looking good, Felix

[Tristan]

Looks great Felix!

Don't loose patience with the corse-grit sanding, the more prep work you do with the sandpaper the easier it becomes. With the 400 grit you should be spending quite a bit of time to make the part smooth, then switch to 600, 800, 1000, 1200 grit. Each 'step' to the next grit will not take very long if you've done a good job with the 400!

[Alex]

Nice work!
I want to go out and get another RD to put on a diet now too!

[Adrien]

@Adrien: Hehe, i can already see you ending up like me. Everything starts with a innocent little aluminium bolt, and some weeks later, your derailleur looks like mine, and your avatar says "OCD WW"

Hmm... maybe I'll be a real WW in some time!

[Boonen]

Nice job Felix! I'm almost ashamed to admit that I haven't got around to doing anything to my own derailleur yet like we talked about (only taking everything apart and weighing it just like you )

I can tell you that the big screw that holds the derailleur to the frame is almost the same for shimano and campagnolo. The one on the pro-bolt site should work without having to modify it, but you could drill a bit of the back to save an extra (tenth of a) gram

Hang in with the polishing kit! I found that very fine sandpaper stuck to a polishing wheel with some glue works wonders as well and is much faster then hand sanding. You shouldn't use to big grained sandpaper as you get scratches that will be hard to polish out. If you keep on using finer sandpaper (200\400\800 etc. grid) you should get a pretty good and shiney surface and when you start buffing it with the polishing wheel it really starts to shine. Sounds like you are doing it the right way though, the black stuff is just metal that get's into the polishing paste. If you dip the spinning wheel into the paste it will melt a bit by the heat generated which should make your job a bit easier maybe.
Hope this is of any help, in the end polishing is mainly about hard laybor though (you could try and invest in a big polishing wheel if you have something like an electrical grinding stone or something that rotates really fast that you can attach it to, that really speeds up the proces)