Quote from JimFPU on Jun 18th, 2008, 8:12am:OK, (and now shows noviceness
) how do I tell what all those numbers are on my equipmment? Do I just count the teeth, or would it be stamped on there somewhere? This stuff is pretty old, as I think it came with the bike in the first place. Looks like I have a lot to learn about chains and cogs...they don't have this stuff on AF jets...
Sometimes the numbers are stamped on the sprockets, usually on the older stuff they're not.The easy way is to just count the teeth. Since you claim a 14 YO bike I'm going to assume freewheel instead of freehub, and probably a 7 speed rear and a triple front. And the terminology for those sprockets is the rear ones are called cogs and the fronts are called either chainrings if they bolt to a carrier on the crank or chainwheels if they have a hole for the crank in the middle and another hole for the drive pin from the crank to engage. On the rear derailler the ability of the mechanisim to take up the slack in the chain when going from the biggest front and the biggest rear, to the smallest front and the smallest rear is called the capacity. Capacity is determined by adding the biggest front to the biggest rear and subtracting from that the smallest front and the smallest rear. The capacity of the rear mech can be found at the manufacturer's web site, except Campagnolo. Campy just tells you which of their parts combinations will work with which deraillers.
My bike is even older than yours being a 1983 model Stratus, so I know what it's like trying to get repair parts for consumable parts of the drivetrain. That's the reason why I went to a current manufacture 8/9 speed freehub, so I could get parts.
And this has gone too long.
Opus