shi+mano front derailleur help

[mrpoonerson]

alright, so i have my bike all setup, i have SRAM x7 shifters and an X7 rear derailleur and it works beautiful, too bad they dont make a top swing front derailleur. so i had to get a shimano XT front derailleur. (honestly if this is the quality from XT i am super glad i didnt get an LX or i would have just gone single ring) anyways, i have sat for about 3 hours fiddling with the thing and i can get it to shift from the lowest cog up to the biggest cog, and from the biggest cog down to the middle cog, but i cant for the life of me get it to shift from the middle cog to the lowest cog, its as if the outer rail is too wide and wont push the chain enought to jump down to the smallest cog. i took it to incycle as its right next to my school and this dude was checking it out, i figured i set it up wrong, but he couldnt get it that well either, now i can shift from 1-2 and vice versa but i cant get into 3 unless i hold down the shifter all the way and even then the cage rubs bad. im contemplating just bending the derailleur cage, but i want to make sure its absolutely positive that its just the frame geometry? well the tech said it could most likely just be that the frame geometry is off.... its a Giant VT2, with truvativ hussefelt cranks and truvativ gigapipe bottom bracket. ugh! anyone local to pasadena that knows what to look for, i dont want to end up spending money going to different bike shops to see if someone actually can fix it or not.. anywho thanks and sorry for the long rant

[TURNERob]

When you have the fr. der shifted into the big ring, how much clearance do you have between the der and big ring? The derailleur should only be about 2-3mm above the big ring, is it higher than that? It just sounds like that guy doesn't know what he is doing. If you adjust the stop screws on the derailleur /get the cage positioned properly/and adjust the cable barrel adjuster you should have no problems. I highly doubt the frame is at fault here.

[Pho'dUp]

Hmm.. Sounds like you're almost there. But I agree with FXRob. If the derrailleur height is okay. Then it sounds like you have the to adjust the upper limit screw for the big ring. You need to back that out a little. It seems like this is preventing you from getting into the big ring. Also, make sure you're not checking your adjustment with the gears all crossed up. When trying to switch to the big ring, make sure you're in the smallest 3 or 4 cogs on the rear cassette. Some bikes (especially suspension bikes) will never work perfectly if you're trying to shift with the chain crossed up.

If you haven't already, check out shimano website for the adjustment of the front derrailleur. It's not too shabby.

[mrpoonerson]

i checked the height, its roughly 2mm from the top most point of the crank teeth. its just real figity. i got it to go down from 2-1, but now 3 is just a lil hard to get into and i get rubbing. poop. still no problems with my sram rear derailleur though \/