Hope for a bent spring?

Anthony DeLorenzo said:

I tried my first derailleur overhaul on the weekend on an old Deore DX.
It came apart and cleaned up nicely, but when I was trying to
reassemble it I wound the cage spring the wrong way, twisting the
bottom couple of coils out of alignment.

Any tips on the best way to bend this back into shape? Or, will the
spring never be the same? If so, are replacements available?

Regards,
Anthony

Are you *sure* you actually bent it? Those springs are really tough.
Memory isn't serving me quite right here, but one of the few derailers
I've overhauled was a DX and I think at some point I've also seen a
derailer spring that had one or two of it's end curls wrapped
non-concentrically to the rest. If you did bend it, you might look at
salvaging a spring from a Deore or XT or one of the various nicer
Exages from around the same era. I have no idea whether the spring is
exactly the same in any of these, but it might be, and it's the kind of
thing where an inexact replacement will probably work fine if it can
fit. It's not uncommon for mechanics of various stripes who see a fair
number of broken derailers to throw all the nicer ones in a box for
later cannibalization.