[Skunks]

Originally posted by Griff
However, if you are mountain biking you should stick with lubes that tend toward dryness.

I tend to use it to get to school, which involves a fair deal of steep hills and such. There's little actual dirt involved. Brief googling was unable to turn up one of those cool height-map-thingies, but this city (Astoria, Oregon) has very little flat ground.

The first thing to do is to take a look at your derailler hanger see if it isn't bent out of alignment. Looking at 3 it appears that your derailler is not in line. Check the cage and see if its bent.

I'd considered that; in the years I've had this bike, it's fallen over onto that side dozens of times. The <a href="http://www.parktool.com/repair_help/DAG.shtml">bit of information</a> I initially found on de-bending the doohickies was fairly discouraging, centering around some alignment tool.

How would I know if it's bent?

Is your upper pulley/chain touching the cassette? You may have a little chain stretch. If it is touching you can adjust your chain tension, either with the screw adjust on the rear of the derailler or by removing a couple links.

What's the cassette?

Also check your pulleys, if they are damaged you can pick up an after market set.

Anything that'd be particularly indictive of damage?

Thanks for the ideas, everybody.