kmart

There are two pivots - one pivot for pulling the brakes and one pivot for shifting. See the attached picture for a little more clarification.

In the drawing, the outer and inner shifter levers slide onto a rod (marked in blue) and are locked down with a nut (label 5 in the drawing). When you depress either shift lever, it rotates about this rod. If the levers slide onto the rod snugly and don't wobble, then when you pull the levers to brake they both rotate about the brake pivot (marked in red in the drawing).

In my case, the levers are not snug on the shifter pivot. When I pull a lever back to brake, first it rotates a bit until it grips the pivot axis and only after that does the lever assembly begin rotating about the brake pivot. This doesn't affect shifting much (not yet at least), but they rattle and make noise. Maybe the hole in the levers that the rod slides through has been enlarged or deformed by squeezing the brake levers too hard (should that be possible?). Another theory is that the nut labeled (5) in the drawing was loose. I took off the shifter cap and tightened this nut down, but it did not help.

Surely someone else has this problem with their old shifters?