As to the Reversal of the Trim, that's kinda how this all started. I attempted it, apparently succesfully. The front lever mount moves in the same direction as the rear lever is shifted, which is correct for a (low-) normal front derailleur. This does not require taking the internals of the "pod" apart, which is terrifying to me and I didn't try it.

I was hoping for someone to say, "I had this happen to me, and it turned out that I had swapped part X for part W. Plus I had part Q in backwards." But, alas, t'were not to be. S'ok... sometimes laziness pays off, but you usually end up painting your own fence.

I'm going to be laid up for a bit after tomorrow, so I'll try to fix it. If I'm right, and I installed some or all of the stack of plates, washers, and other weirdo fiddly bits backwards, upside down, in the wrong order, or any or all of those failure modes, I'll let everyone know. If not, I'll probably put the 600s back on for now, because I already have them and I'm broke.

And I'll second Piff on the shift feel of these things. It's fantastic. Almost as smooth as the Retrofriction, and they pull more cable, so they're almost as positive as the Sprint / Riv / Dia Compe micro-ratchets. The only downside is the weirdo mounting. (Which I grok... the two levers need to talk to each other for the things to work, and they can't if there's a downtube in the way.)*

--Shannon

* And the gnomes just handed up another Bad Idea from the Cave. An adapter that fits standard downtube shifter braze-ons on the sides, with a little "hat" on top for the Symmetric pod to screw down on top of. And now all of the thousands of the things cluttering up co-op bins all over the country can finally find their forever homes, on bikes that will appreciate them. (As with most of my ideas, I am totally unqualified to implement this one.)