shifting issues – advice please

Drinfinity wrote:

How do know rear mech alignment is good?

If this is a general question, a quick test is to look down the line of the rear wheel and see of the derailleur is in line with a cass cog. If the chain line deviates too much you will see it.  The final check is to use a hanger aligment device.  You can buy then from £30 upwards or make one out of 20mm box section tubing with a correct bolt,washers etc- see youtube.  

I’m still running old 91-92

I’m still running old 91-92 XT 7×3 STIs on my getting to work bike, found that giving the pods a good clean whilst taken apart with Finish Line Speed Clean (cotton buds and towel) and then lots of Finish Line’s Pedal and Cleat Dry Film Lubricant, seems to be non oil and almost all PTFE.  Keeps them going a bit longer, not my first set of course, ebay to keep her Retro and quality.  Works great on the brake lever pivots/bushings too.

ive revived it a bit by

ive revived it a bit by spraying loads of WD40 in to the shifter and letting it drain, got lots of brown stuff out and it shifted a bit better, removed the cable and housings whilst I was at it, I trimmed the ends of the housings which were a bit frayed and re lubed the cable, seems good now. Cable and housing arent that old and are decent shimano ones.

Thanks for reading, and hope this may be useful to you.

StraelGuy wrote:

STIs do wear out, what’s the mileage on them? That Australian cyclist, who’s name escapes me, on youtube did a video showing you a worn out one. Main symptom was that it would shift ok on one side of the cassette but the pull was off by the time it got to other side.

Sounds to me like a shifter

Sounds to me like a shifter issue, I found with my Campag Centuaur shifters that I could shift to larger cogs one by one but when releasing tension to move to a higher gear I would find myself changing 3 at a time, in my case my LBS sent it back to the importers who did a full refurb and all is now well.

CXR94DI2 – thanks for the

CXR94DI2 – thanks for the reply but thats not helpful here im way past that stage

DaSy – thanks – yes its not hard as in firm but wont shift immediately or has to be hypershifted, derailleur moves fine so yes probably shifter then

Kil0ran – some well used shimano sora 9spd, its on my all purpose hack so im begrudged to buy new ones, I was hoping that somone might say something Id overlooked

You say it is hard, but in

You say it is hard, but in what way? Can you just not push the lever, or does the lever move but no movement at the deraileur etc?

I would try to isolate the issue by putting the bike in a stand and then;

Try to manually push the deraileur across the cassette whilst rotating the cranks. If that works (ie, you can get it to span the full cassette with no great effort), you know it’s not the mech or its limit screws.

Then, if you have exposed inner cable running along the chain stay or down-tube, grab that and pull it, again whilst rotating the cranks. If that works, you have reduced the issue to the last section of cable inner/outer and the shifter.