Need a little help. All of my bikes are friction shift so this is not usually a problem for me. My wife wanted a bike set up with these shifters....



8 speed triple. The front crankset is 52-42-30. Front derailler is sora triple.

From above, the derailler looks perfectly lined up with the chainrings. It shifts just fine from small to middle and from middle to large. But while in the middle chainring, the chain rubs the inside of the derailler cage on the smallest 3 cogs. Now I know I can't cross chain too much, but I ought to be able to use those combinations with no problem.

Does this have anything to do with cable tension? My front derailler cable is pretty slack when on the smallest chainring. Here's a pic showing the slack...



The front shifter has one of those extra indents below the "1" when you let the cable all the way out. You click to the "1" and the cable gets taught. You click again to the "2" and you shift to the middle chainring with no problem. When you hit the trigger to go back to "1", the shifter falls all the way past "1" to the previous indent. The chain falls to inner chainring with no problem...not sure if I got this cable set up right for this kind of shifter...

here's my cable routing...



In this pic, you can see how slack it is with the shifter in the pre indent...but if you push the thumb shifter half a click to the "1", it trims it up nicely. Unfortunately, there are no more pre indents after this one....there is just 1,2 and 3...so no trimming...

Any advice would be appreciated.