>>1380960Because people realized the biggest advantage of the hammerschmidt was actually chainring clearance, not instant shifting. “SHIFT WHILE PEDALING BACKWARDS” is a cool slogan but people realized rear derailleurs shift good enough anyways. Now people have fucking 9 teeth cogs in the back so we can make the front ring as small as possible
>>1380939I’m saying that anything that close to your wheel, hiding behind your almost 3 inch wide tires, isn’t very susceptible to normal rocks and such, and that you would have to be riding with your tires locked into a rut to scrape your derailleur in that direction, and that if you did, that cage is spring loaded and has some give to protect itself. Your blue-rated shale trail doesn’t scare me, I see the 90% of lines that wouldnt hit your cage, I’ve gone through chunkier stuff without even touching the cage of the derailleur. Yes my derailleur knuckle is scraped to shit, because it extends further outwards than the cage, since derailleur width is more prone to clipping than short/long cage. Cage is not something I would worry about destroying before any other part on the derailleur. And finally, DH only runs short cage because they can, they won’t be using the benefits of a fuckhuge cassette so obviously they can take advantage of a smaller cage and retard-roadie gear range. For people who aren’t getting carried to the top of a mountain every lap, they’ll REALLY want a fuckhuge cassette, which, like it or not, needs long cage. Like sure you can say long cage is more vulnerable than short cage, but you’d also have to convince people that 11-24 tooth is better than 11-50 tooth
