Road Rear Derailleurs
Whatever type of road riding you love most — from racing to weekend epics, smooth roads or gravel — the performance of your road rear derailleur is critical. This hardworking drivetrain component shifts the chain across the rear sprockets, allowing you to ride in just the right gear whether you’re climbing, sprinting or crushing the flats.
Today’s drivetrains, which often have 10, 11 or even 12 speeds in the rear, require precision performance from the road rear derailleur. When shopping for a new rear derailleur for your road bike, it’s generally advised that you stick with the same brand as the rest of your drivetrain. While some drivetrain components such as cranks, chains and cassettes are compatible between brands, shifters and derailleurs usually are not. Shimano, SRAM, Campagnolo and other brands that we carry at JensonUSA.com each have different cable pull ratios, so mixing these parts can hinder shifting performance.
Once you know which brand you want, you’ll need to know how many gears your bike is running and then choose a derailleur for that particular setup. Finally, you’ll need to decide on cage length. Many road rear derailleur options come in multiple cage length options. Most traditional road bike drivetrains (11-28 or smaller rear cassette spread) use short-cage rear derailleurs, but if you have a large range of gears, as you might on a touring or gravel bike (or anything set up with a single front chainring), you may need a medium or long-cage option.
One other variable to consider is electronic versus mechanical. If you already have an electronic drivetrain on your bike, your rear derailleur choice is fairly straightforward as you’ll need something that’s compatible with the shifters. If you have any questions at all, hop on a call or a chat with one of our expert Gear Advisors today at 888-880-3811 so that we can help you find that perfect item.
