sti shifter cleaning
06-23-09, 10:43 AM
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sti shifter cleaning
how would you go about cleaning the brifters (tiagra if that helps) if some sand got into it? i flipped my bike upside down and put it next to my friends at the beach and there some sand in the shifters now (i shouldn't have done it but i didn't have a lock that day.) nothings wrong with the shifting, its just i want to clean it up before anything happens to it.
06-23-09, 08:48 PM
#2
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Depends on where the sand got into. I'd probably try a shop vac first to see if I could suck the sand out. If that didn't work, I'd resort to flushing the brifters with WD-40 and then compressed air to blow the sand out followed by relubing.
Funny you ask this as someone just posted a very similar question about sand in brifters.
Funny you ask this as someone just posted a very similar question about sand in brifters.
06-23-09, 10:44 PM
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Yeah, I just flushed a Tiagra brifter that had been contaminated with sand... Used a whole (small 155g) can of WD-40 and a lot of running water, finished with an ounce of Triflow. Got most of the sand out, but not all. It seems to be working fine now. Of course, the downside of flushing a brifter is that it removes the factory grease, and now that it's lubricated with the light oil that is Triflow, I figure I'll need to add some once in a while since it doesn't have the staying power of factory grease.
I figure that having sand in the works of the brifter cannot be good in the long term. The insides will probably get ground up a lot quicker...
Of course, if you choose to do the flushing, you'll need to remove the brifters from the bike and then remove the hoods (easy). Still, that's quite a bit of work. Ah well, I guess the lesson here is to avoid getting sand in the brifters in the first place! Me, they were already contaminated when I got them.
I figure that having sand in the works of the brifter cannot be good in the long term. The insides will probably get ground up a lot quicker...
Of course, if you choose to do the flushing, you'll need to remove the brifters from the bike and then remove the hoods (easy). Still, that's quite a bit of work. Ah well, I guess the lesson here is to avoid getting sand in the brifters in the first place! Me, they were already contaminated when I got them.
06-24-09, 12:24 AM
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You can also take them apart, clean them, and regrease them. I haven't done this with Tiagra, but i did it with my 600 8 speed ones. There were a few hidden screws and then the whole ratchet mechanism came out and i cleaned and greased all of the little pawls and such. If you do this do it somewhere where you aren't going to loose anything if you drop it or it pops out though. I dropped a piece on the floor and it went under a counter and i thought i wasn't going to find it and my shifters were trash.
