First things first. The bike in question is a 200 dollar walmart bike.

Anyway, it has Shimano E-Z fire shifters on it. The other day the bolt came loose on the the rear shifter's up lever and so I tightened it up and applied some loc-tite to keep it from happening again. Well I figured I would do the same to the front shifter too. Now that I had more trouble reassembling this as the spring popped out but eventually I figured it out.

The thing is, it doesn't want to shift down now. When it's in third gear and I hit down it'll click into second, but when I shift down to first there is no click and it slightly goes below the number 2. However the cable is loose. I've messed with the front derailleur a lot and no matter what I can't get it to pull the cable (and chain) back down into first from second gear or third.

Another thing is that the night before I was putting the chain back on and my chain remover screwed up and I ended up having to remove 4 or 5 links before I got it back on. The chain is a 7 speed chain I guess.

So... Is my front derailleur screwed up and won't spring back right, or is my chain too tight and derailleur simply can't push it down?