Austinite

New bike. Kind of jumpy on some of the rear cogs, so I thought maybe i'd try friction mode just to see if rear der. adjustment was the issue, and not the new (sticky) chain. But when I twist that little ring to friction mode, it still acts indexed. It is a *bit* more frictiony, but there are still the spots where it grabs. Am I doing it wrong? I pull the ring out perpendicular and twist in the direction of the "friction" marking until it doesn't seem like it goes farther.

dcrowell

Is it the Shimano bar-end shifter? I hate mine.

My first one broke within days of getting the new bike. The replacement has sorta-broken, meaning indexing doesn't work right, so I switched it to friction mode. It still indexes (incorrectly) now and again. The plastic piece of it has cracked, and I think that is the problem.

I've been told I'm doing something wrong by many people who love theirs. My LBS has said there is an issue with those shifters. When money allows, I'm going to replace them with some friction-only ones (Silver Shifters?).

I rode someone else's LHT with the same shifters, and they worked beautifully in indexed mode. I'm thinking it's just recent batches of these things that are bad.

Austinite

Yeah, on the Long Haul Trucker. And I *like* them, but I figure since the bike is brand-new, I just need to adjust the rear der. Still, I'd like to also figure out why I couldn't get the thing into friction mode so I could just keep moving down the road the other day.

desertdork

IME, there should be a positive "click" when you engage into either friction or indexed mode. There's a chance that you haven't correctly engaged friction mode.

Austinite

Bingo. Ok, this thread is done. I wasn't turning it far enough. It got hard to turn at a certain point. I just turned it *beyond* that and it clicked right into friction mode and worked perfectly.