Poor Shifting After Rain
 

I recently completed Cycle North Carolina. The last 3 days / 225 miles were in pouring rain (T.S. Tammy) and my bike had to sit outside, uncovered on the first rainy night. When we got home and dry, I noticed really stiff shifting. I started with simple stuff and worked my way up. After my efforts resulted in only marginal improvement, I finally replaced the shift housing. That did the trick.

The housing was really stiff and rusty on the ends. I usually don't start a ride if I think I'm going to get soaked, but I've been caught out on occasion. I also occasionally wash my bike, but have never had any housing-related shifting problems like this before. I've been replacing my housing every other year as a preventive measure, and these were only 9 months old.

Since I don't ride in the rain much, I was wondering just how much exposure it takes to have a problem.
It seems as if occasional wet riding is normally not a problem (as long as you can dry out afterwards) and the 1 1/2 uninterrupted days of exposure to riding and sitting in the rain (followed by 2 more days of solid rain) that got me. Comments?

Thanks

Do you ever lube the chain/drivetrain? How often?More often after wet exposure??

How do you lube the cables & housing? For fairweather bikes, I generally squirt triflow into the housing. For all-weather bikes, I rub the cable down with the goopiest grease I can find--usually trailer bearing grease--before putting it in the housing. Good for keeping water out.

But then again, I usually work on old friction shifting bikes, and I don't know much about/hate indexing. I could be missing something.

Used TriFlow and kept the chain / drivetrain clean and lubed daily in the rain. But then again, my problem was the housing of my index shifters (STI).

I've never lubed derailleur cables (except unber the BB and where it enters the rear derailleur housing. Is this one of those topics that divides the bicycling community?

Try lubing your cables. The worst that yould happen is 2.4 extra grams of grease.

A wrench told me once that lubing the cables sucks dirt etc into the housings as the cable slides in and out.

Get the chain cleaned up and re-lube. You should not have to lube the cables IMO.

Shimano recomends greasing the cables, and has some cables now that come with silicone grease already in them.