Originally Posted by
wphamilton
Fixing shifting, Andy_K suggests that you "might" need new cables and of course he's right, but if you want to save some time and be done with it upgrade that "might" and get new cables and compressionless cable housing at the start and go from there.
This is pretty sound advice if you want to do things right. The reason I hesitated to suggest it is that changing the cables requires the tools I mentioned (cable cutters, hex wrench, pliers), while simply adjusting the shifting to get it to work as well as possible with the current cables can be done with just your fingers. I'll admit, however, that there's a very good chance that working "as well as possible with the current cable" may still be pretty unsatisfactory. Fresh cables do wonderful things for shifting performance.