Bike front derailleur

I bought a bike from EBay. It has decent components, but they seem mashed together incompatibly. My front derailleur doesn’t shift properly.

I tried adjusting the front derailleur, with little success. The clearance to the big ring is always than 1mm (too little).

A mechanic told me that my front derailleur is for a double-ring crankset, and therefore incompatible with my triple-ring. However, I’m not sure whether the mechanic is right. The derailleur is a Shimano FD-2203, the manual of which suggests it can work with a triple-ring.

Here are the components:

• Front derailleur: Shimano FD-2203.
• Rear derailleur: Shimano Ultegra RD-6600.
• Chainrings: Shimano SuperGlide with 52, 42 and 30 teeth. (They’re marked “Shimano SG A-52-42-30”.)
• Cassette: Shimano CS-5600, 10-speed.
• Shifters: Shimano 105 “FlightDeck” ST-5600.
• Bottom bracket: marked “Shimano, EE, Japan VIA, BC.1.37, 68”.

• Frame:

  • The seller said “I think it’s made by Toyo”, but the frame lacks markings suggesting this.
  • It has the frame number “CM3280024”.
  • It’s marked “Aluminum Kinesis 6061”.

There is a mixture of different Shimano series here: 2203, 6600, 5600.

From the manuals, the main “incompatibilities” I noticed are:

• The shifters (ST-5600) want either FD-5600 or FD-5603 front derailleur, but mine is FD-2203!
• The front derailleur (FD-2203) wants ST-3303 shifters, but mine are ST-5600!
• The front derailleur (FD-2203) wants 24 gears, but I have 30!
• The front derailleur (FD-2203) wants RD-2200 rear derailleur, but mine is RD-6600!

The front derailleur looks like the impostor, so maybe I should replace that - but what with?

The manual for the FD-5600 wants 20 gears, so that doesn’t work.

The manual for the FD-5603, suggested by the shifters, wants:

• ST-5600 shifters - OK!
• 30 gears - OK!
• Front chainwheel FC-5603 - ???
• Rear derailleur - RD-5600-GS - ???
• Front chainwheel tooth difference of 20 or less - NO, I have a difference of 22!

Is this the cause of my problems?

Here is a photo of the front derailleur:

I wrote this because I felt like it. This post is my own, and not associated with my employer.