General Cycling Discussion - gimme a break

Well, ha ha, I was out doing a little "fun" riding on some muddie roads and stuff, and "*****" my left shifter broke. It just blew up for no reason. One of the internal pieces is shattered..I found that out when I stopped and bought a screw driver to put it back together.

It is still ride-able though. Thank goodness.

Hey Fubar

It must be that cold weather you are having down there. It's making everything a little brittle.

:)

What brand/model of shifter broke? (I'm still running the respective original Campy downtube friction shifters on the Capo and the Bianchi, the original SunTour thumb shifters on the mountain bike, and 30-year-old SunTour downtube levers from my late Nishiki on the Peugeot ... )

Funny, my Trek 1200 came with STI shifters. Fantastic, though a little hard to adjust for precision. Point being, one morning on the way to work, on the bottom of perhaps the tallest climb (you know how those planners make roads, straight up and over every hill) one of them "malfunctioned." By a miraculous event, it continued to work for me, if I fiddled with it just right, and I got to work (late.)

But (...but...) it finally self-destructed. The replacement cost was
a little high (over 100 smacks) so I Frankensteined my Giant mountain bike's handlebars, grip shifters and cables onto the Trek.

Lost three speeds, but I don't miss them. In fact, I don't miss my STI's either. The grip shifters are so forgivable when it comes to adjusting for precision, I often wait until they are way out before tuning them.

(Lazy-Boy.) :D

Fubar: Sorry to hear about your shifter. I'm guessing you've been logging a lot of miles since you got your fork. I have some shifters that may be what you need. I'll post the details in the 'Wanted' section.



Originally posted by Pete Clark
But (...but...) it finally self-destructed. The replacement cost was a little high (over 100 smacks) so I Frankensteined my Giant mountain bike's handlebars, grip shifters and cables onto the Trek.

For a minute I was thinking 'I guess it is possible to put Grip Shift onto drop bars'. :confused: Then I re-read your post and had to chuckle at myself. Just curious, did you try fitting the shifters on your old bars or were you just trying to keep things simple by leaving the shifters on the bar?


(Lazy-Boy.) :D

You took piano lessons on a player piano didn't you? ;)

From everything I have read, that is a major disadvantage of STI. You must replace (can not repair) them when they go. Not true with that other major producer in Italy. ;)

Cheers...Gary

Whaddya mean "gimme a break?" What do you think you just had? :D

Seriously, I hope it wasn't the start of a run like I had last year. I broke half a dozen things inside of two weeks :eek: