PadawanWrench

Y’all would tell me if I was gonna do something stupid, right?...

My buddy has an old hybrid bike. He’s torn between fixing it up and buying a new bike. Would prefer to sink less money into fixing the old bike and riding it for a year to get used to riding again, rather than buying a new bike now and ruining new frame and rims because of his build (he’s a Clyde and wants to ride to get back in shape). He has been looking at a few newer bikes. He test rode the GT Transeo and liked it, but the price tag is a little steep for him. He also looked at some bikes at Target, but I’m trying to steer him away from that.

I’d rather we get his old bike up and running, but the shifters are shot. Since they’re combined with the brake levers, the guy at the LBS said it would be pricey to replace w/new parts (@$150 for shifter rehab and maybe new cables, new tires/tubes, basic tune-up) and he only has about a 50% success rate w/rehabilitating old trigger shifters anyway. My friend doesn’t want to sink more than $200 into a rebuild because, at that point, why not buy a new bike w/o any problems? So he’s on the fence...

What I’m thinking about doing is this:
a) look around at local thrift stores to see if there are bikes there with comparable shifter/brake lever setup and make sure the shifters click through full range;
b) buy the bike for parts;
c) transfer the shifters/brakes over to my buddy’s bike;
d) Bob’s your uncle.

Is there a boxcar (stoker, caboose) missing from my train of thought?... I’ve got Zinn’s book on mountain bike maintenance, so that should help, yes? As my handle suggests, I’m new to the whole "fix your own bike" shtick, so I’d appreciate any thoughts y’all have.

Thanks,
David

PetesDustyVolvo

If you've got any wrenching skills at all from cars or whatever then working on your bike should be no problem. You'll learn from your mistakes along the way.

badmother

Are you sure the shifters is shot? Remember they are only a part of the shifting system. Not once did i come across a bike whereboth shifters is destroyed, one is also rare unless the bike is used alot.

Clean and lube the drive system, also the derailleur (sometimes you need to dismantel it) and front gear.

Inspect cabels and housing. If it looks ok then grease the cable innside the housing. If not ok replace.

Make sure cables are the right lenght and derailleur and front gears adjusting screws is here they should be.

If it still is not working get new shifters. This (cleaning lubing and inspecting) is something that should be done sveral times a year, depending on riding style, where you store your bike and so on.

I like the idea of first repairing what is already there. Ride what you`we got and find out what you want. For sure he is going to buy a different bike next year than the one he would buy now, and the one he is going to buy next year is going to be more right for him in the comming years.

Also having a spare bike is useful.

Get your friend on the road!

awc380

$150? Get another estimate.

CACycling

+1 on repair what you've got.

I've brought back 4 bikes in the past 13 months (the 4 oldest in my sig line below) and the basic "getting them back on the road" cost less than $50 each including tires and tubes. One had a bad shifter that was brought back with a lot of WD40 but mostly they needed brake pads, cables in a couple of cases and lots of cleaning, lubing and adjusting.

The first bike will help your friend lose some weight and begin to see what kind of riding he likes (if he likes it at all). This will help a lot when looking to buy the next bike and, as noted above, nobody can have just one bike.

DMF 

A hybrid isn't going to make him want to do much riding on the road. It's more suited to commuting and tooling around with the wife and kids. If he's really testing to be sure he'll like it, look around for a used road bike - age unimportant. Be sure to get one that fits him. Shop LBS for used bikes and/or new ones until he can figure out what size he needs (pay special attention to Top Tube length).

curbtender

Could be that those trigger shifts are gummed up. Lots of post in here that you can search for help. Try spraying some solvent like wd40 in the shifters and see if they free up.

PadawanWrench

Thanks for the input, everybody! The LBS man apparently put a whole lotta Liquid Wrench into the shifters to breathe some new life into them, but it didn't work. However, +1 to him: he was thoughtful in giving his estimate (there was more involved than just the shifters in the $150 figure) and did the liquid wrench thing at no charge, so he's a good guy.

Now I guess I'll start searching on shifter rehab posts, tho I confess that the idea of opening them up only to hear SPROINGGG!!! and scattering ample kitty toys everywhere leaves me a bit wary.

Although my dad was an electronics technician (practically taught Marconi how to build his first crystal set) and my brother was a car mechanic for 30 years, I've never really been mechanically inclined. Until now, that is. I've just gotta remember my new mantra: Don't wrench angry...

David

wrk101

The cheapest option (if you are persistent) is to find a complete replacement or a donor bike. I am using the parts off of a $5 donor (thrift store find) right now. The $5 donor is about 10 years old and was a $800 bike back then. But the frame is trashed. I do not need the frame, so it is a perfect, cheap, donor.

I will have $10 total into my rebuild. $5 donor plus $5 Walmart cables......

CACycling

If the option is replacing the shifter, what do you have to lose? Give it a shot. Open it up, manipulate the pawls till they move freely, close it up and go for a ride.

jgedwa

Give those shifters another chance. I cannot count how many bikes I have picked up for peanuts because they did not shift, and simply put a few minutes into taking them apart just far enough to really clean them out. There are small pawls and cams in there that need to be freed up. Seems wasteful to drop that kind of cash when you are likely looking at a $1.29 solution.

jim

sonatageek

If the shifters are really shot (I have had one bike where the right rapid fire was worn out and not just gummed up) do they screw onto the brake levers? If they are that style, you could take them off and replace them with a set of $1.00 friction thumbs shifters. Shimano Tourney indexed thumb shifters are about $20. Heck you can get new Alivio rapidfire pods for under $30. How many speeds is the rear cluster?
https://harriscyclery.net/itemdetails.cfm?ID=1023
https://www.niagaracycle.com/product_...oducts_id=6285
https://www.niagaracycle.com/product_...ducts_id=31406

wrk101

+1 for Niagara Cycle. I have bought a lot from them in the last year. $8.40 for a set of thumb shifters!

Little Darwin

I agree that there are options for repair.

Even getting new levers and shifters that are separate would be much cheaper than $150.

Shifters/brake levers $39.95: https://aebike.com/page.cfm?PageID=30...ils&sku=LD8919

They won't ship Shimano components, but this is just as a price point. With some looking around, I think you can get some others in the price range as well, probably by going with separate shifters and brake levers.

By the way, AEBike tends to order all of their stuff from standard sources, so your shop may be able to give you a deal at a similar price.

Maybe some cables added in for $10 or so.

So total cost under $60.

Joshua A.C. New

Don't neglect Ebay. A little patience can save a lot of money.

HopliteGrad

An alternate set of analyses on repair vs. buy new transpired in this thread and has been useful to me in evaluating the question.

PadawanWrench

Much appreciated on the responses.

Okay, so this may be a stupid question, but - should the shifters be on or off the bike when I start working them over with WD-40/Liquid Wrench/solvent of choice? Does it matter?

If they need to be on and tensioned in order to "click", I'd rather know that before I stripped them off the bike.

2wheeldeal

Grip shifters would be the way I would go. You can get a single SRAM grip shifter for the rear for $16. I assume your shifters are the thumb lever type. Then you would need brake levers, easy to find a used pair. I believe Shimano's price for a front 3-speed replacement gripper is about $10. And the SRAM shifter can be either Shimano or SRAM compatible.

Retro Grouch 

Rehabilitate an old bike or buy a new one?

With a new bike you know exactly what it's going to cost going in. Every single part is brand new. Every single part has also been designed to work with every other part. You also get a new bike warranty so it's going to be more reliable. Those are all good things.

Rehabilitating an old bike you get the fun of rehabilitating an old bike. You can choose parts that exactly match whatever intended use you envision. You get to be the one who balances the cost/benefit ratio of every single part. (Be careful with that one.) You can also match the esthetics of the bike to your own personal vision.

Personally, I pick rehabilitate the old bike every time. Why should I pay somebody else to have the fun of designing and building my bike?

ogbigbird

new bike would get you a partial warentee maybe, but i personally go with doing the rebuild. yeah, you can get cheap thumb shifters or gripshift (both in my opinion better than what you got there now) through any of the above mentioned posts. get new wires and housings to go with those and if you are worthy with a wrench, you'll find it easy and straight forward to do. i agree a $150 est is higher than i ever paid for such work and parts for what you described.

hybrids aren't that bad. they are good at road and good at trails, but not great by any means at either or. the rest of teh tune up things can be easily done and for not too much money, especially if you do it all yourselves. the LBS parts prices are definatly going to be alot higher than you will find off line. patience will be worth it.

BCRider

+1 on fix up the old bike first. And not because he'll "ruin" a new frame but only because if he's that out of shape the hybrid will be a little more kind to his body as he works on the first stage.

It may be expensive to replace the original shifters but there's pleanty of options both new and used for a budget fix. Low end twist grip shifters come to mind right off and the non-combined brake levers needed to go with them are not expensive. Mail order or Ebay and you should have what you need for under $40 no problem.

If it's been sitting where it all corroded do the cables and housings as well. They are probably gummed up as well.

On or off the bike doesn't matter as long as you leave the cable in place so you can pull on it. But obviously leaving it on the bike and just opening up the covers to expose the guts means you'll have the tension you want already there. On the rear remove the rear wheel if you can so the derailleur isn't trying to pry the chain over all the cassette sprockets.

The insides may have rusted beyond repair or they may have just rusted enough to be rough. Some tinkering may well free up the catch so it clicks again. Good luck with it. And since it's broken already don't be afraid to dig deep if needed.

DavidL

make 'er a fixie. it's cheap, easy, and will get him into better shape than if he rode around on "easy" gears.

badmother

That is cruel

PadawanWrench

So, here's where things went this weekend...

After much hemming and hawing, my buddy decided to let me go ahead and attempt the shifter rehab. I took them off the handlebars, removed the cover and started lubing/working triggers/etc., but stopped unscrewing stuff when I saw the little "Here be dragonnes" sign posted near the tightly wound springs. Just kept working those triggers in a vain hope that they'd respond. Another friend who's a dab hand with a wrench joined us as well, and when I went in for a new round of drinks, had gone tearing past the sign and was now searching for that pesky spring...

As Arlo Guthrie would say, "We had a good time fillin' out the forms, and playin' with the pencils on the bench there" (read: figuring out how the dadgum thing went back together) until my wife called me back inside to take a phone call from my brother. By the time I got off the phone, my original buddy had gone online, found that the GT he had been thinking about at Performance was on (an even deeper) sale, and decided to pull the trigger on that.

So, it would appear that I have a new project bike , on which I'll be mounting SIS thumb shifters from Niagara (and at $8 a pop, who wouldn't?) and turning into my beater. I look forward to recabling brakes and drivetrain; maybe even tearing open some of the other areas that I've been afraid to before. (Regrease bearings in BB and headset? Could be an adventure....)

Oh, and BTW, I'm not going fixie; not that there's anything wrong with it, I just don't get the allure.

Thank you again, all, for the input and support. I'll check in again just as soon as I stumble over the next "Here be dragonnes" sign.

David

BCRider

Sounds like everyone gets what they want in the end with no losers.

There's no mysteries attached to cleaning and lubing the headset or BB. Just a couple of new specialty tools you want to buy first.

If it's a sealed one piece BB then it's just a remove, toss, replace deal with no servicing possible short of passing more of those "here be..." signposts. And don't forget the wheel bearings while you're at it.

Best of luck with the new project.