Rear derailleur cage project（continuing）
After the success of the Valve Project (yes, I’ve started selling this valve stem fairing online, and it’s selling quite well!), many cyclists have suggested that I develop an aerodynamic rear derailleur cage. Its wind-breaking effect would be even better than that of the Valve fairing.
The world-renowned manufacturer Ceramic Speed offers a rear derailleur with a fairing and large pulleys, priced at CNY3,500 . If I can come up with a new design, it might well be in short supply. Easier said than done. There are three major bicycle derailleur manufacturers worldwide: Shimano from Japan, SRAM from the United States, and Campagnolo from Italy. Each has numerous product lines and models with distinct designs. Through research, I’ve realized this is probably why there are no such products on the market currently—developing a fairing for every single model is commercially unviable, as the costs cannot be recouped.
However, I want to challenge myself to see if I can design a universal product. But after a month development and test, I gave up my first idea because it is too heavy and too big while riding. It even made the shifting slower than the original RD cage. Aero , light and stiffness seemed to be an impossible triangle for me. I have to do some compromise
User research is the best approach! I went back to talk to riding friends and mechanics in the bike shop. They complained a lot to the design of ceramic speed products which was so expensive. Some RD cage product could even buy a new bike! They provided me good ideas to make improvements on the original manufacturers’ design.
First I started to search for the new materials which have character of both light and stiff. It was a long way of failure , failure and failure. 99.99% materials could not be used to last long time riding and shifting. I finally realized why Shimano ,SRAM and Campy used a cage structure which is heavier and not aerodynamic at all ,while Ceramic speed made some improvements on aerodynamic but making it even heavier.
Luckily, after 3 months failure, I finally found a material could fit my aero design of no cage structure. It is super light and super stiff which could support long time riding and shifting. Plus my aero design , it reached a middle point of the impossible triangle. I installed it on my Storck bike and rode it for 100KMs. It was perfect! But the problem is it only fit for Shimano products. I still could not find a way to make a universal design to fit SRAM and Campy RDs. And the installation process is also not so friendly which might take one hour to replace the original RD cage. I am still working on solving these challenges now.
