island rider

I've got two SRAM equipped bikes. One Rival is rival shifters, front D, rear D and standard red crank. The other is Red shifters, Yaw front D (replaced second broken Red front D), praxis compact chainrings (attempting to fix crappy SRAM compact shifting), and red rear D.

I have had an ongoing problem with my mainly red setup where it eventually becomes impossible to shift to the big ring in the front. I sometimes have success shifting the rear with the front D over the big ring and having the chain slide up, but I am usually left trying to push the lever all the way over with no results. I had one mechanic tell me I had to almost stop pedalling and start again slowly in order to get the shifting to work, and another suggested the praxis rings. Generally it works for a while and then stops.

I recently started having the same issue with my rival setup. Months of working properly, and now, big struggle to get up to the big ring.

Could this be as simple as cable stretch?

Most of what I see on the web talks about worn components. I can assure you, the red setup rings and front D are new, and the rival is not sufficiently worn to pose a problem.

I appreciate any thoughts. I have seen too many mechanics who pronounce the problem solved on the red bike only to have it re-appear. I am really tempted to strip off all my SRAM and go back to Shimano (my ultegra has thousands of miles with normal maintenance without missing a shift or dropping a chain, cannot say the same for SRAM).

Al1943

Yes

goatalope

Can I assume with the Red w/Yaw you have the new 2012 shifters? Yaw isn't designed to work with older Red stuff.

I'd suspect cable stretch too, but mechanics dealt with it and couldn't fix it? Better be more than cable stretch if thats the case.

Kimmo 

Can we stop calling it cable stretch please? How about housing compression.