Got the Symmetric instaled this morning.

If t'were done at all, t'were best done very slowly. Especially the part where it worked anti-symmetrically. Not having a Spirt front derailleur handy, I commenced to the reversing of the motion.

...Two hours later...

Well, not really, but almost. Two things, other than my general ineptitude, door vision, and low DEX, contributed to the extensive faffing about. First, lots of small and nearly-identical parts, which have to go in in a particular order. And second, the exploded diagram is backwards from the way you (for which read "I") hold the lever while you're (I was) working on it.

I didn't notice the last bit until two or three failures into the process.

Then the setup, which, other than starting with the rear shifted onto the big cog, was refreshingly easy.

Which leads to a different question:

What might cause skip downshifts to the middle 2 cogs? The 5 -> 4 is fine, nails it every time. So's the 2 -> 1, but that's shifting into the stop, so it kinda has to work. There's a barrel adjuster on the RD, but I don't know how to use it in a friction setup. (With indexing, it's easy... middle click, middle cog, center jockey wheel, done.) The Symmetrics do less of this than the 600s did, ditto for the V-GT Luxe vs the 600. Is it just a matter of me learning the bike more, or is there a setup / adjustment issue at play?

--Shannon