EGreen

After a couple of weeks of doing high cadence riding neglecting my large chain ring (on a triple), I went to shift up and nothing happened. Must be the cable tension, I thought. When I tried to adjust it via the barrel adjuster it would not budge either way. I WD-40'd it then lubed it up, the adjuster and cable, to no avail. This is my 'good' bike with DA components (FD Chorus) so there is no dirt or rusting involved.

The limit stops are fine.


Anyone?

EDIT NO dirt, rusting

EGreen

Man, no time, no patience! Going off to 'support' my LBS! Are we certain these guys aren't getting rich?

Kotts

WD-40 is not a particularly effective penetrating oil (contrary to what their advertising would have you believe). It is an effective corrosion preventative (WD-40 means "water dispersant #40").

Alloy parts can sieze, gall, and/or oxidize in ways that you won't detect until you get them apart.

Try a little bit of Kroil. Busty, or PB Blaster on the barrel adjuster.

Kotts

Psimet2001 

I am sure you've already done this, but it never hurts to add to add this suggestion. Make sure that you have the cable tension against the adjuster relieved before attempting to adjust (shift down to small chainring). I have run into adjusters that will feel completly locked when under cable tension/compression. Kind of defeats the purpose IMHO, but who am I to judge...

Landgolier

need more symptoms...

lever would or would not move?
Tension in cable changed when lever moved?
FD could be manually pushed to outside position?
Shifting could be accomplished by yanking on cable manually?
Shifting from small to middle and back OK?

Bobby Lex

Grab the cable by hand (where it runs along your downtube) and pull it to see if it will shift.

If not, or if it shifts only with great difficulty, lube the pivots on the derailleur itself, and grease under the bottom bracket where the cables run.

A friend of mine with a fancy Trek and full Dura-Ace had this same problem. The front derailleur simply stopped shifting. Turned out he hadn't lubed his derailleur pivots ever, and the bottom bracket cable guide was metal. The metal cable running along the metal bottom bracket guide, which had never been lubed, finally just seized up.

Might be your issue, too.

Bob

operator

You'll have to disconnect the shifter cables probably, remove them, grease it up and put it back in.

erader

make sure you are turning them in the right direction too .

erader

dbg

It's unlikely this is your problem, but I've had the tiny linear wires in shifter cable housings work their way past the the cable ends and into the shifter body locking it up solid. I was cornfused until I replaced the housings and saw the problem.

shaq-d

he went to the LBS and disappeared from this thread forever..

EGreen

Gone but not forgotten

Thanks for all the thoughts on this...as dbq said, I was so cornfused

Went back to the bike and apparently the lubing I'd done (including the cable guide under the bb) had seeped in and freed the cable up - then it became a matter of the same old frustration of getting the fd tuned just right - for which I did finally make a contribution to the support your lbs fund.