Chain rub on a triple - to be expected?

[RolliePollie]

My bike has lower end components, so I'm not really sure what's normal as far as performance goes. I'm wondering if things need to be adjusted or if what I'm experiencing is to be expected.

Here's what going on...

My crank is a 52/42/30 and my cassette is an SRAM 850 12-26 8 speed...front derailleur is a Shimano 2203 and the rear is Tiagra.

Biggest chain ring - all gears are fine, no chain rub. Unfortunately I rarely use this ring because it's really hilly here and there's no way I could get up a hill in this ring!

Middle ring - out of the 8 gears, can functionally use all of them, but the 2 "hardest to pedal" gears have pretty good chain rub going on. I try not to use them.

Small ring - out of the 8 gears, only use about 4 or 5. Easy pedalling gears work fine, but as I shift into harder-to-pedal gears, I start getting major chain rub. By the time I'm up to the 5th gear, it's making so much noise I'm afraid something is going to break.

I hope this is just something that needs adjusting. My difficulty is that I need my granny gears to get up most of the hills around here. But then I'll have a flat or a downhill and I want to be able to pedal, but I don't want to be switching rings every 1/8 mile. It would be nice to be able to use all 8 on the middle and small rings. Any advice would be appreciated

[Starfish]

Do you know if your setup has what they call "trim?" It is a way of doing partial clicks on your left hand (chainring) shifter that shifts the front DR small amounts to help avoid rub.

I have heard people say that you almost can't avoid rub with a triple, but I have a triple, with trim, and I don't get rubbing if everything is adjusted right. I'm no good so far with my own adjusting...I tend to really mess things up. But, my LBS is happy to do adjustments for free for me.

I have a triple Shimano 105 setup, 9 speed.

I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff...just my .02 for what it's worth!

[Fredwina]

I have Ultegra/105, Truvativ/LX, and Sora/Campy Mirage/2200 mixes. Normally, I won't get it unless I'm "cross chaining" i,e, using the big ring with the biggest cog on the cassette or vice versa.
By "hard to pedal"- are you referring to small cogs or the big ones?

[RolliePollie]

I have Ultegra/105, Truvativ/LX, and Sora/Campy Mirage/2200 mixes. Normally, I won't get it unless I'm "cross chaining" i,e, using the big ring with the biggest cog on the cassette or vice versa.
By "hard to pedal"- are you referring to small cogs or the big ones?

I don't know my terminology - it's so hard to explain in words!

By hard to pedal, I mean the smallest gears on the back wheel. So I guess my biggest problem is when I'm on my small chain ring and my smaller gears on the back. And my secondary problem is when I'm on my middle chain ring and the smallest gears on the back. Which I guess means that the problem is when I start cross chaining. Although I think maybe it's cross chaining way before it should be?

Starfish - I'll ask my LBS about trim. I hope I have this option. But I won't try it myself...I'm sure I'd mess it up even worse than it is now!

[Fredwina]

sounds to me like you're OK. I think almost any bike would do that.

[RoseC]

Sara,

I'd definitely ask your LBS about trim. I'm still getting the hang of it myself... I posted a thread here a few weeks back because I thought my front derailler was out of whack since I got chain rub up front when I was in the smaller cogs (higher speeds) in the back.

Turned out I wasn't using trim properly. On my bike, when I'm in those gears in back, my shifter for the front has a sort of half shift thing it can do - I push the inside lever a little bit (not allll the way across - just about halfway), there's a sort of pop, and the rub stops. I'm still not real clear on how it works - seems like that adjustment just magically becomes available when I need it.

I need to read up on it. And probably ask the bike shop folks for another tutorial.