MyRedTrek

Working on a bike with budget twist shifters. I've got them liberally lubricated with silicone grease so they're smoother than they were, however there's a bit more notchy resistance than I'd like. I was thinking about smoothing out the areas the spring rides on - or is a certain amount of wear-in over time to be expected and I should leave them alone?

veganbikes

You are way overthinking this thing, it is not designed to work well it is designed to hit the lowest price point and that is it. The shifter is going to feel like a potato and I would just accept that and move on. Save up your money for a bike that will actually shift smoothly this one really won't. You might get a little break in but not enough to change much of the feel.

MyRedTrek

I guess you didn't catch on from my previous responses that I have -0- interest in your assessment of what I should and shouldn't put effort into. I don't value your opinion on what's "overthinking" or worth my time. You apparently lack the capacity to even recall what I said about why I'm working on this bike.

If you don't have information to impart all you're doing is introducing noise. It'll be fine with me if you put me on ignore and never respond to another post of mine.

Is that clear enough for you?

bboy314

Not to pile on, but I agree that spending any effort to try and make these budget grip shifters work better will be futile. I’d spray some lube in there and call it a day.

Kai Winters

Twist shifters are not alike.Some continue to work well, shifting smoothly and easily, over time while others become stiffer and stiffer until they require herculean strength to twist.
Replace them. They are generally inexpensive to buy. Or better yet get some nice lever type shifters. Either way once they become a problem no amount of work is going to restore them to good working condition.

freeranger

Not all twist shifters are created the same. But in general, they don't usually work all that well. If it was my bike, I'd replace them with some trigger shifters-either Shimano or Microshift.
I agree with Kai.

Moe Zhoost

Having worked on dozens of grip shifters over this past year, my advice is simple: If they work, leave them alone.

Mr. 66

Junk I wouldn't even bother. I would go rapid fire shifters.

grizzly59

I have had good luck with grip shifters. They are sensitive to good, clean, and greased (silicone) cables. Housings appropriate lengths, no kinks, etc.

xroadcharlie

I have sram Gripshift mrx pro 7 speed twist grip shifters on my 2018 Giant Sedona. I wanted the trigger shifters but couldn't find another bike like this with them. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they work once I got used to them. The new Sedona has the trigger shifters I believe.

I want them notchy, I want to feel them shift. There not hard at all to turn though. I'd rather these be a bit stiffer actually.

squirtdad

your are over thinking, and then when called on it you get insulted. Here is the deal with forums you ask for input, but you don't get to control the input you get, you have gotten this input on virtually every thread you have started, from multiple people so who has the problem?

and to answer your question this cheap twist shifters are what they are, any mods you make will just make them work worse or quit working, they will die soon anyway. I see this all the time at a bike charity I help with. The answer the charity uses is to throw cheap friction thumb shifters on

zandoval 

I am a Down Tube Friction Shifter guy but the last time I replaced the cables and housings on a friends MTB the Twist Shifters suddenly started working flawlessly...

tkamd73 

As stated earlier, just buy new ones, they are cheap, and they will work better then the old ones you have. They are not worth trying to rebuild, as most of the internal parts are just plastic. I actually kind of like the grip shifters on our Trek 750, they are comfortable and easy to use, only get about 10 years out of them though, we’re on our third set, but at 16 dollars a pop, who cares.
Tim

Trakhak

The set of SRAM GripShifts on my 1995 Cannondale H300 hybrid still works great. However, having overhauled a couple of gripshifters in the past, I agree that upgrading to a better model makes the most sense for the bike in question. Decent gripshifters cost comparatively little, and the improvement would likely be very noticeable. But make sure that the new set is compatible (number of gears, Shimano versus GripShift cable ratio).

dedhed

IN the OP's defense, he never said it was his bike, just that he was working on it, and was told to save up for a better bike.

veganbikes

Wow quite aggressive. I gave you good information whether you wanted to read it or not. The shifting is not really going to change it was poor from the start and is not designed to get better. You might see for 30-40 minutes of work a tiny iota better shifting if you can get the damn thing back together.

You want help be open to it, you want to be aggressive maybe there is a WallyMart Bro forum. I cannot provide that here but I can provide useful knowledge from a good number of years in the bike industry at different shops and in general being a bike nerd and someone who enjoys tech. I get that you want to put your time and good hard earned money to try and improve this but it is not something that really can be improved for all the time and money put into it. You can get it a small bit better with a basic tune up and anything else on top of that is just time you could have been out riding and enjoying life, the bike really won't get better it wasn't designed for that it was designed to hit a price point and that is it. It is not a slight against you but real talk on objects of that nature.

There are plenty of low cost decent quality used bikes that would be great candidates for fixing and improving and might even be worth putting some time into or could be a fun project that will actually have a net gain, a bike from WM just won't. I could have one of the most famous or best pro-mechanics put together and tune up a Huffy or Magna and put their years of wrenching experience at it and in the end it will still be that same bike it won't gain value or be exceptionally better. Certainly it will be safer to ride and will work a small margin better but the actual parts won't change and the frame is still the same so even if it is a touch better it won't be very durable or reliable and like many of those bikes won't hold a tune very well.

I get it you want to learn and become better at wrenching, not a bad goal but the bike you are trying to learn on is just not worth putting all that time and effort and you will end up going from zero to zero in weeks or months or however long you decide to take and that is not a great way to go about things. You do you, my friend and hopefully at least you had a bit of fun at the end but the theme is pretty consistent.

MyRedTrek

He didn't "call me" on anything - just like you he made a pointless value judgement and imparted no information, which I already told him in a different thread I'm not interested in. I'm not insulted I'm annoyed. If it's beyond your capacity to understand why someone might be interested in working on the existing hardware even if it's just simple curiosity it's not on me that your brain doesn't stretch that far. I *have* better bikes with better hardware, I'm working on *this* bike with the existing hardware. If you've seen my other threads and it's beyond you to process why I'm working on this bike nothing I can do about that.

While no I don't control what someone posts, they're also free to hear about it when they've already been told their noise isn't what's being sought. At that point they can't claim they're trying to be "helpful" - I can't help it if someone has some personality disorder where they feel compelled to repeatedly insert unwelcome noise.
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hokiefyd 

What model twist shifters are you using here? Shimano Revoshift? SRAM Gripshift? Microshift? Non-branded? They all work a little bit differently, though the one thing I have found to be consistent is you probably won't experience any "wear in". As has been noted above, the internal parts are usually plastic and, while those surfaces may "polish up" a little bit over time, the feel of the shifter usually doesn't change with age or use. Actually -- it can change with age -- it can gum up if there's a lot of old grease in the works, but it sounds like that's not applicable in this particular case. I think you may end up making it worse if you try to modify the shifter for lower resistance.

I don't know the history or situation surrounding this bike, but if the existing shifters are Shimano Revoshift and you like the shifters themselves but just not the feel -- the higher model numbers in the Revoshift line have a much smoother and more refined feel...look for the SL-RS41 or RS45. They have a "soft touch" motion to them and don't have at all the same click-clackity feel that the RS35 and lower numbers have.

2_i 

In the grip shifters, a spring out of bent metal tape rides on plastic teeth. That spring often jumps out when the shifter is dismounted, such as for cable replacement, and needs to be put back in. The excessive "notchiness" may come from the fact that the spring was incorrectly placed when being put back in. If the same symptoms pertain to two shifters, this might have happened with both. I would dismount one of the shifters, maybe even take the cable out, and play with it, twisting it around, observing the spring that rides on the teeth, etc.

Obviously, some 'notchiness' is inherent to this type of shifters. Reaching absolute smoothness would lead to the shifters not working, as these shifters work on a compromise: the force of the hand needs to be stronger than of the cable pulling when moving the shifter from one notch to another. The greasing generally should have minor impact on the feel of these shifters. Its goal is to reduce wear of the hard plastic teeth against which the mentioned tape spring presses.

MyRedTrek

You inserted opining devoid of information.

You confirm my suspicion that you haven't spent 10 seconds looking at one of these - if you had you'd know how simple they are to disassemble and reassemble. You're preoccupied with inserting - and now trying to rationalize opinion you've already previously been told is unwelcome - but don't know what you're talking about when it comes to the actual question that was asked.

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MyRedTrek

They're basically a no-name clone of other shifters with the same basic construction - two main pieces and a spring inside the fixed part that rides over a series of humps molded into the outer piece that you twist.

veganbikes

You have some odd suspicions. Having actually worked on these bikes professionally I know they aren't really designed to come apart and then back together on occasion you can get them back together but most of the ones I have seen or worked on can come apart but getting them back together is not really possible. I get it you have a one bike and you want to believe it is way better than it actually is because you spent your money on it or you are desperate to prove the bike is better so long as you put a ton of time into it but that is just simply not the case.

hokiefyd 

I suspect there's a delicate balance with that spring-and-hump design of providing enough friction or retention to prevent the derailer from pulling the cable back through the clicks, but not so much friction or retention that the shifter is easy to operate. I bet that range is somewhat narrow, and trying to modify that may net poor results.

squirtdad

just to note I did also provide meaningful information, which I will repeat and to answer your question this cheap twist shifters are what they are, any mods you make will just make them work worse or quit working, they will die soon anyway. I see this all the time at a bike charity I help with. The answer the charity uses is to throw cheap friction thumb shifters on

MyRedTrek

Vegan was already advised in another thread that I got it thinking I was going to use it as an inexpensive beater spare for times when my Giant Cypress needed work but it proved to be too small so I'm gifting it to someone - I'm not going to dump a bunch of money into it replacing all the hardware, I just want to make sure that everything that's on it now works as well as possible. If they want *they* can put money into a new bike they're getting for free.

I also like tinkering with things whether it's a bike or my Corvette with a Weiand supercharger on it and if I can enhance the functionality of the factory pieces that'll be great. It's completely possible to do on cars and other mechanical things but the notion of this seems to fall outside of what Vegan and others are comfortable considering. Their default is "Big Box bikes are complete crap period" but appears to be based on "common knowledge" rather than personal experience since he's made clear he isn't aware of how simple these shifters are to take apart and put back together. So far I'm not finding there's anything particularly wrong with the bike other than the assembly and adjustment was shoddy.