tastewar

I have a ~25 year old (~1991) Specialized Crossroads that for the first time today, I experienced some weirdness in shifting with. I rode the bike to work last week, and there were no problems. Today, when I shifted, many times it felt like the rear derailleur was "hunting" -- i.e. shifted right between 2 gears and unable to commit.

My suspicion is the shifters. They are original to the bike, Shimano STI combo mountain style shifter/brake. I think they are referred to as "rapid fire" shifters. Normally, when I click one of the buttons, the rear moves a single gear. If I press further, it will move 2 gears. Today, sometimes it wasn't moving at all, or at least not effecting a gear change.

Here are some photos on Flickr if my description is unclear.

Shimano STI shifters/brakes from Crossroads

Does that sound like a common failure mode of these older shifters? If not, what else might it likely be? And if so, what are my replacement options these days? The bike is setup 3 x 7 (as original), although the rear cluster itself was replaced a couple years ago (with a bigger low gear for my aging body...). The brakes are traditional canti's, not V-brakes. If replacing, I'd like to keep it as similar as possible, i.e. would rather not move to separate brakes and shifters. Also, would probably prefer something new (NOS is fine) rather than someone else's 25 y.o. castoffs on eBay...

Any advice?

techsensei

It's likely that the shifters are not broken, but just need to be flushed of old dried out grease and relubricated. Most of the time you can just spray a solvent into the shifter through the cable access hole to free it up, although sometimes it is necessary to open up the shifter to physically free the stuck pawls inside. But try flushing it out first. WD-40 work okay; I prefer Clean Streak. I use TriFlow or Boeshield to relube.

tastewar

Thanks for the advice. I will check that out. One of the more annoying aspects is that if I end up needing to take the levers off, either for maintenance or replacement, they have to slide off the end, which means undoing the new tape I put on a week ago. Hopefully I can do the work with them still on the bike. Is there any guide out there to overhauling these particular shifters? Searching for STI yields a lot of useless (to me) hits...

techsensei

You could leave the shifters on the bars. You would need to remove the cable, remove the cable barrel adjuster, and then remove the plastic shroud held on by the screw on the bottom. That exposes all the internals.

Retro Grouch 

25 years old. Does that have the shifters that have two push buttons under the handlebar? If it does, you can fool around with them or you could save yourself a lot of trouble by buying a replacement set of rapid Fire shifters.

tastewar

Yes, those are they. What's the name of the thing I'm looking for that would be most equivalent *if* I end up replacing? I'm wanting 3x7, cantilever compatible, brakes and shifters in a single unit, and something that fits on mtn sized bars. And something that operates similarly (e.g. thumb clicking, separate up and down buttons, as opposed to twisting)

Retro Grouch 

Rapid fire shifters, 3 X 7. My go-to source for stuff like that is Niagara Bike. You might even be able to find a canty brake/ shifter combined set, but I doubt it.

The cheap answer to the brake lever problem is to hack saw off your existing shift pod from the siamesed clamp. Honestly, I've used V-brake levers with canty arches and didn't think it was a big deal but I'm sure some other posters will disagree. Avid Speed Dial brake levers have adjustable cable pull and will work for sure.

AlexCyclistRoch

All Shimano shifters have parts that wear out. Your shifters are 25 years old, and I bet they're worn out.

dsbrantjr

Also check your shift wire for fraying iniside the shifter. Although not as bad as brifters, it is still easier to get the wire out before it breaks off.

If you need replacements, consider separate brake and shifter. You can adjust their position and angle on the bar separately and choose your brake lever to suit your brakes. Shimano SL-M310s are still easy to find and will work with your 3x7-speed system and generally come with new wires. BL-M550 levers work well with cantilever brakes.

Camilo

edit - sorry, I made an inappropriate reply thinking I was reading a different post. No, I'm not PWI, but just getting old.

Bill Kapaun

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q4MTWK/...3TJJ5Z6Q6JF15E

You need the 4 Finger version, which is convertible to Canti's. 2 Finger version is V brake only.
Pic attached shows how you move the plastic "plug" to change from one way to the other.

tastewar

Thanks, all, for the helpful info! When I got home, which was a bit of a struggle, I put the bike on the stand and started looking into the shifters. No screw on the bottom of these. I clipped the cable at the derailleur end and pulled it back to the shifter. I then worked at getting the plastic cover off the shifter. Not easy with the cable still passing through the end! (Yes, I had removed the barrel adjuster). Once I got the cover off, I could see that the cable was pretty frayed at the shifter end, where it goes around the bend. (Thanks, dsbrantjr. Even that was rather a pain to get out. It was too frayed to push back through, so I had to clip it, and use a paperclip to push the rest of it back through. OK, that wasn't hard, but finding a paperclip was! :-)

At that point, my brain concluded that perhaps the frayed cable was to blame for gumming up the works, but I took a brush and some WD-40 and cleared out the ratcheting wheel. I ran a new cable and wondered to myself whether I'd ever changed that shifter cable before! Surely I would have remembered this procedure (not the steps, but just the hassle of it all). And after having disassembled it that far, I couldn't figure out how one might in fact change the cable without that much disassembly. I must be missing something.

Anyway, I put it back together, re-routed the cable, secured it back at the derailleur, and adjusted it. Ran smoothly on the stand. Then went for a test drive. Same problem as before!! Ack! I had felt so good about the process, and so certain about the frayed cable. But I didn't give up. I played some more with the rear derailleur adjustment (using the barrel adjuster there), and now it is running great!

Makes me wonder if it had just somehow gotten very slightly out of adjustment in the first place. Seems very sensitive. Anyway, not sorry that I took it apart and replaced the cable. No doubt it would have snapped at some point in the coming year, which would have been even less convenient.

Thanks for all the help, folks! I'm half tempted to buy a set of those Altus anyway, as insurance against the inevitable. Thanks for the link, Bill Kapaun