kurosen

Hello all,

This is my first post so please forgive my lack of bike knowledge. My wife recently bought me a 2010 GT Outpost with disc brakes and I love it.

Before going any further, I understand that there is a great debate over putting a kickstand on a bike. Please understand, in my case, it is an absolute necessity.

I recently bought the Greenfield KS2 with Retro kit. It fits on my bike, but bends the shifter cable- now the shifts don't feel so smooth, and pedaling gives a sound and feel like the chain isn't properly lined up when in certain gears. Please give me your thoughts on a replacement kickstand, or if I can use a dremel to sand down the plate until it doesn't touch the cable (though the kickstand will need to bear around 20lb of mass from the bike center).

You can check out the pics below to see how the current setup looks - sorry, I'm not much of a cameraman

dabac

Bending the wire effectively shortens it. try adjusting it to a little bit longer. Front shifters have had their wires simply looping under the BB shell, running in a plastic guide for years. Unless there's a nasty edge it's resting against you're probably OK.

flanso 

A Greenfield KS2 would not fit my bike; there just was not enough room behind the bottom bracket. Greenfield also offers a kickstand called the Stabilizer SKS2B which mounts easily on the rear triangle. I have used a Stabilizer for three years and I am very pleased with it. It is good quality and my bike is quite stable when resting on the stand.

kurosen

dabac: thanks for the advice, I will try loosening a little and post results.

flanso: I looked at the same solution myself originally, but realized it wouldn't work due to the disc brakes interfering.

kurosen

Alright, I was hesitant to try my hand at loosening as I didn't want to throw anythign out of alignment. After doing a bit more research (and finding no other kick stands for this bike), I've decided to try to loosen the wire a little. Is this something I can do myself, or should I let a bike shop handle it? What tools will I need? I put the bike together, but my experience is mainly with electronics and very minor car mechanics.

DieselDan

You will not change the dérailleur settings by loosening the cable. Loosen the pinch bolt, ease the cable off a bit, then tighten back the pinch bolt. I could demonstrate better then explain.

kurosen

Again, please forgive my ignorance, but where is the pinch bolt located on my bike?

BCRider

The pinch bolt is on the rear derrailleur.

You can find a good write up on setting up the cable and adjusting the shifting along with a great many other bike work questions at www.partktool.com/repair . Hover your mouse over the rear derrailleur on the "index bike" and click.

CCrew

That plate for the kickstand is in direct contact with the FD cable. No amount of adjusting the wire is going to change that.
I'd be looking for a kickstand that mounts off the chainstay in your case. Or, possibly (because it's hard to tell from the pics) you could grind clearance into the kickstand mount plate.

kurosen

I couldn't get to the site BCrider mentioned and tried my hand at it... Things didn't go so well... I loosened the bolt on the right side of the first picture in my original post, and the mechanism that controls derailleur movement pulled towards me. I tried adjusting it back to normal and found I had screwed up alignment for the front shifters. After a bit of fiddling, I got it to shift correctly from 2 to 3 and back, but going from 1 to 2 isn't working (I guess I need to pull a bit more wire). Any guides on the proper way to adjust the front derailleur?

CCrew: I was thinking of grinding down, but I'm afraid it will weaken the plate too much to support the weight I mentioned in my original post.

AndrewP

https://www.parktool.com/repair_help/FAQindex.shtml This is the place to find repair instructions. The suggestion to loosen the cable a bit omitted to say that you should first put the left shifter in the 1 position. You original idea to put a dremel to the kick stand mounting plate was a good one. Only remove enough to stop the cable going over a sharp bend.