It's been well advertised that the SRAM Red Yaw front derailleur has revolutionized mechanical front shifting. Tom Boonen won a pair of monuments on it last year. One could arguably claim that the simple concept of an uneven parallelogram that pivots about the seat tube, negating the need for a trim function and packaged into a lightweight and (importantly) stiff front dérailleur is the crown jewel of the new Red group. But does this seemingly unsung piece of metal really live up to the hype?
After the jump I'll examine my experience with the Yaw unit over the past eight months and figure out if it lives up to the hype.
Installation
I've covered the installation of this derailleur back in this post (and in this video), but it bears repeating: this is not like installing any other derailleur on the market. I discovered this the hard way when I simply pulled the unit out of the box and slapped it onto the bike (or rather the local mechanic did) and didn't read the directions first. Unfortunately this resulted in somewhat poor shifting and chain rub that nearly drove me to the brink of insanity.
Correctly installing the Yaw unit (after only a couple of rides with a grinding front dérailleur) changed my outlook on my purchase significantly.
Old Vs New
The derailleur that the Yaw unit replaced was a titanium cage SRAM Red LTE model. To be honest, I really had very little complaint with the titanium Red dérailleur: sure the cage was a little more flexy than the steel cage Shimano or SRAM derailleurs that I have used, but I never found myself missing shifts or longing for a quicker action. I was always cognizant to “overthrow” the shift lever just a bit to make sure the chain climbed sufficiently up the rings, and I was attentive to chain lubing and cleanliness (as the chain got dirty and nasty, it would shift poorly front and back; a fresh application of Chain-L remedied this).
Amazingly, with the switch to the Yaw derailleur, all this is a thing of the past. The Yaw unit does away with the titanium cage and switches to a steel cage, something that SRAM sponsored pros have been doing with their Red groups for a while now. The change to steel makes for a stiffer cage and more precise shifts, and it is definitely noticeable. Worrying about “overthrowing” the shift is also a thing of the past; a flick of the wrist/shift paddle and the derailleur does the rest, throwing the chain up onto the large ring with alarming accuracy.
How Good Is It?
The Yaw function works exactly as described. Once properly set up (and that's a very important point to make) you will think something is wrong with the derailleur: the outer cage is far from parallel to the big ring. But you'll find that you can shift almost all the way down the cogs with no chain rub on the derailleur (except for the smallest cog, but who cross chains like that in real life besides Andy Schleck?)
The quick, smooth action of the shift up into the big ring reveals that the inner cage plate is not parallel to the inner chain ring either. But shift up the cassette into the largest cogs and you'll hear….silence. The lack of chain rub in the extreme cross chaining gears is incredible, and is especially welcome when the going gets hot and you're looking to grab that last cog without shifting down into the little ring.
The integrated chain spotter is really a fantastically thought out concept. Instead of using a longer bolt and a somewhat clunky series of washers like some others do, SRAM designed a chain spotter that neatly fastens into the derailleur mounting bolt. The mounting bolt is internally threaded; the chain spotter slips over the bolt and is secured by a second smaller screw. A “tension screw” allows the user to adjust how far from the chainring the chain spotter will sit, and it stays there extremely well. The only downside is the requirement to have a new style band with the chain spotter tab or use a clamp on style derailleur. Without either of those two, the tension screw is useless.
Compatibility
According to SRAM, the Yaw front derailleur is only compatible with the new SRAM Red shifters. Testing, both by Velonews and through my own testing has proven this to be false. Thinking about it from a mechanical standpoint, the cable pull ratios haven't changed, nor has the chainring spacing, so everything should (and does) work well together.
In terms of combinations of components and how they work, the old model Red shifters combined with the Yaw derailleur were superb. The trim feature was completely redundant, but the shifting action was excellent. The new shifters with the old derailleur was slightly better than the old shifters and old derailleur. The new shifters combined with the Yaw derailleur is a really magnificent combination. I've had no missed shifts and only a couple of occasions in which the chain spotter did it's job admirably. Bear in mind that these combinations were all tested with the old Red Black chainrings on my Quarq, so again, I can tell you that the derailleur (and shifters) work just fine with the old chainrings.
I can honestly say that while the new Red shifters are a quality product with some welcome revisions, the Yaw derailleur is perhaps the biggest achievement of the new group. At every turn I've been impressed by the engineering and performance of the Yaw system, and I highly recommend it to anyone using ANY variety of SRAM drivetrain. If you want to pick one up, you can get it at your LBS [easyazon_link identifier=”B0079V30LY” locale=”US” nw=”y” tag=”taicoaandthed-20″]or online here[/easyazon_link].
MSRP – $137
old post but good read. I just installed the new Red crankset after my 4 year old Apex started slipping (decided to upgrade the whole unit). I’m now riding Red crankset with Apex FD. Not ideal but getting the job done. Im hoping an upgrade to this Yaw unit without upgrading shifters will show a significant improvement in shifting up front. Would you recommend a shop to do this install? I think the FD alignment is the toughest adjustment to make perfect in bike maintenance.
You should have no problem installing and tuning it yourself. The yaw setup is pretty straight forward and guides you through the whole setup perfectly.
To update on my previous post, I have been riding my Apex up front with the Red Exogram crankset and it is working flawlessly. Credit my LBS for setting eveything up to have it shifting precisely. Upgrade to the Yaw might be good, but not essential for quality shifting.