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another thread I started here, I talked about the heresy I've been committing of converting my wife's new Platypus complete to dropbars :) Since she did not like the bar-end friction shifting, I also installed a pair of Microshift R9 brifters. After the install the shifting was pretty terrible. No matter how I adjusted things, there was always at least one gear that was off: it shifting into it slowly and did not want to stay, skipping between gears.
I got tired of trouble shooting it and we ended up going for a ride. Well, the gear that I left as the "bad" gear was a pretty unfortunate choice on my part, it being the 8th out of the 9 cogs. Opps :/
Afterwards I thought "I never checked the derailleur hanger alignment, thinking it couldn't be that on a new bike, but it's showing all the symptoms of being out of alignment." Well, today I put it up in the stand and put the alignment gauge on it. It was out of alignment in the vertical axis by 14 mm and by 15 mm in the horizontal!! Gave it a few precision tugs and now it's within 1 mm everywhere. After readjusting cable tension and limits, it shifts great now.
Of course, if it had been left in friction shifting we'd probably never noticed. I guess I shouldn't have assumed that the alignment was correct, even on a new frame. But the build quality of the Platy complete outta the box was so good (I barely had to make any adjustments after assembly), I guess I got lulled into thinking everything was dialed.
In case it was not clear, we got a complete Platy but opted to not have Rivendell do the final assembly. Just picked up the complete still in the box. I still think those completes are a screaming deal and the partial assembly in Taiwan was still top-notch. Just a good reminder to check your hanger alignment when you have poor indexed shifting, even on a new frame :)