Originally Posted by
mike868y
wow, way to completely scare me into not ever wanting to touch my derailleurs again, lol. Thankfully, I didn't ride my bike more than once up the block while I was messing with it, and it got so messed up that it was completely unrideable. There is so much to learn about cycling, it is ridiculous. From riding to mechanics, it is never endless.
Don't worry about it too much -- after all, it ain't rocket science.
I made my best breakthrough in adjusting road shifters at about 3 AM almost a year ago. And, yeah, it was all about cable tension. It was definitely different from the friction shifters on my first ten-speed back in the early 80's. What BarryJo said about setting the front cable is probably the simplest, easiest way to get it to shift well.
When I adjust mine -- either the front or rear -- I make sure that there's just enough tension in the cable when it's fully released (for the front, on the small chainring; for the rear, on the smallest cog). The indexing of the shifter pulls a certain amount of cable for each click, and if the cable at the derailleur doesn't move the same amount, the indexing is thrown off and it'll never shift smoothly.
It's like when you're fishing; if you have some tension in the line, you can keep control of the fish. Or maybe it's more like a guitar string, where if it's too loose
or too taut, it just won't play the right note.
If you can suspend the bike in the air somehow, all of these adjustments become a LOT easier to make.