Mountain Bike Parts - Front and Rear Derailleurs

Mountain bike parts serve to enhance the off-road cycling experience. There are many different parts of such a bicycle. Among the most basic are front and rear derailluers.

The gears allow a bicyclist to keep a comfortable or maintainable pace no matter what the slope or speed. This pace is known as the cadence.

As time goes on, these off-road bikes continue to gain more and more gears. In fact, some today even have as many as twenty-seven ratios. These gear ratios are created through the various combinations of different sprockets. The typical layout is to have three of these located in front and nine located in back.

The gears are changed through the use of the derailleurs. These important mountain bike parts move the chain between sprockets as needed. There is a front one as well as a rear one.

The front derailleur moves the chain between the front sprockets. It works with the top portion of the chain. As mentioned previously, this is under tension due to forward motion. In order to switch the front sprocket being used, it is necessary to ease off on the pedaling.

Sprockets are designed to hold and move the chain along smoothly. These mountain bike parts have developed to do more than that of course. Shorter and wider teeth as well as ramps and pegs are some of the elements used in sprocket technology to ease gear transitioning.

The rear derailleur has two jobs to accomplish. The first is to ensure that the chain is always kept tense, regardless of the speed at which the rider is traveling. If the chain is on the largest front and back sprockets of the bicycle, the chain will naturally be more taught. If the chain is on the smallest sprockets of each, the rear derailleur has extra slack to manage.

The second task which the rear derailleur is faced with is that of switching gears. It does this by moving the bottom of the chain from side to side. It deals with the bottom rather than the top because that portion of the chain is under less tension. The force of the legs pedaling forward is what keeps the top under significant tension.