Took the Headshok C'dale out today for the first time in over 5 years. 3x7 RSX was flawless.



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I like it more than my S 105 in some aspects, the front brifter (2 x) is much softer (some girls with small hands have difficulties to front shift with S 105), and also light shocks against the main lever won't leave any visible marks on the metal, unlike the black paint on more recent models that is easily scratched. And no creaking noises!

Only issue I have with RSX is that every 10 years or so, the rear brifter won't shift anymore, and I need to clean it inside (solidified grease or something, it always happens in cold temps, winter.)

Nice bike, btw...

Shimano brifters are well known for gummed up internals, especially those that sat for long periods of time without use. Bikes that hadn't been used in years are particularly prone to this.

Although Barrett's Bicycle Manual recommends shifter disassembly and soaking in solvent, I found a much easier way.

I used a product called CRC PowerLube in a red can. Solvent plus PTFE (teflon) so it not only gets the gunk out, it lubes the internals.

I'd direct the spray into the shifter, work the shifter in both directions, and repeat. Depending on how gunked up the shifter was, this step could take anywhere from a couple minutes to 10-15 min.

Never failed to free a gummed up brifter, and made them shift more smoothly as well.

We have 3x7 RSX brifters on our tandem, a '99 Burley Rumba Softride. Everything works perfectly.

One of the bikes in our stable, a 2004 Trek 1500 with 105 brifters, belonging to one son, has always had trouble with the gumming up, and need frequent spraying with a lubricant that leaves a dry lubricating film (so as not to attract sand and dirt), even when he's riding it regularly.

The RSX groupset is ultimate budget do-it-all groupset. The 7 speed brifters is good for both older freewheel hubs (with 7 speed freewheel) and newer HG hubs. The cranksets come in 110 compact, 110/74 compact triple, 130 double, 130 triple varieties. The brifters and the hubs come in both 7 speed and 8 speed versions. The hub has the labyrinth seal on the right side, and the 7 speed freehub has HG-C splines so it can accommodate 11 speed small cog. There are even DT shifters and standalone brake levers if you so wish. The bottom swing FD-A410 is kind of an evolutionary dead end for road bikes, but a godsend if you have a Peugeot with the Simplex boss interfering with the usual FD mount.

Here's a maybe-dumb question but hear me out. I have no bikes with brifters, have never worked with them. Is the left RSX brifter friction? And if so, it'll handle either a double or triple, right?

I ask because I am considering putting brifters on my current project, a 1994 Bridgestone RB-T, which already has an RSX 3x7 drivetrain. Nothing against the OEM barends, just thinking of doing something different; also the grips would fit my riding posture. I know Microshift would provide a new option for staying 7 or 8 sp, but folks obviously really like the old RSX.

No such thing as a dumb question! No, the RSX had set detents and wasn't "friction". According to Sheldon Brown, the 7 speed RSX left hand brifter worked with both double & triple. Like anything that tries to do more than one thing, the performance was compromised compared to dedicated double and triple shifters. Since you have an RSX triple front derailleur, an RSX left hand shifter should match up as Shimano intended and work as best as it can. Ebay has RSX shifters listed almost all the time in varying degrees of appearance and performance. If you go the brifter route, study up on how to de-gunk them; you might run across a set that someone says don't work, but with a little bit of effort and chemicals you can resurrect most of them. Good luck, and if you run into any snags/questions along the way, the Classic & Vintage forum would be a great place for you to participate in.
John
PS If you don't already know of Sheldon Brown and his website, you ought to look him up as he was a wealth of information.

Thanks! I have been around here for some time--17 years!--though with some gaps in those years. It was actually the C&V forum here that sent me down the wicked path of iniquity that is the vintage bike hobby. I went from 0 bikes in the household to 4 or 5, a Park stand and set of tools in just a few months! Sheldon Brown was another early discovery. I have just never dipped my toes into brifters and saw this thread as a quick source of very specific info.

Most of the units FS on eBay are listed as 'for parts or repair,' but a couple sellers have the confidence to say that the brifters work. I have read or heard of several repair methods to get them going when they fail, everything from total disassembly to squirting X into them to just heating them up with a hair dryer to melt the old gunk. I have gotten a balkly old Shimano thumbshifter going again with some careful cleaning and re-lube, so an old set of RSXs don't seem like too much of a gamble.

But I have bigger fish to fry with this project before I 'update' (to the mid 90s) the drivetrain.

FWIW, unless you're dead set on completing the group, I'd go with the Microshift., The separate upshift and downshift paddles work better for me

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For future reference, I found this quote from Sheldon that someone dug up years ago and put on another message board. I can't find this on Sheldon's pages so possibly he wrote it somewhere else...maybe even here.

>I wasn't quite correct in that. I've looked it up in my old dealer
>manuals, and here's the poop:

>>7-speed RSX groups used a 46 tooth large chainring.

>7-speed RSX was made from the 1995 through the 1998 model years.

>For the 1999 model year, RSX was completely revamped, became 8-speed and
>used full sized (52 tooth) chainrings.

>The 8-speed version was listed with both a double (SL-A416) and a triple
>(SL-A417) STI unit.

>8-speed RSX was only made for the 1999 model year, and didn't sell well,
>so the parts are much less common than the 7-speed version. I don't
>recall ever seeing a bike with an RSX 2 x 8 system.

>RSX was replaced by SORA in 2000.

>Sheldon "Likes Sora Better" Brown

I had never run across the hairdryer method, wonder how it works. My most successful recoveries involved liberal applications of WD-40 or some variation on penetrating oil. Anyhoos, you seem like you will have no problems getting a gummed up brifter to work, keep us posted on which route you decide to go.

Hair dryer works but you still need to flush it out with some solvent.

I really miss Sheldon Brown.

John Allen is doing a good job of keeping the sheldonbrown.com website going, along with Harriet Fell. But neither of them are as young as they used to be. Hope a new generation can be brought on to keep the site going when the time comes - I'll try to remember to talk to John about it next month.

Back to RSX: these brifters have been some of the most difficult to thoroughly degunk - earlier generations of Shimano index shifters typically put up more of a fight and have older gunkier (and more) of the old dried grease. Plus it's almost impossible to access the pawls and other mechanisms directly without extraordinary disassembly. When I was early in my use of an ultrasonic cleaner to degunk shifters, I ran a set of RSXs through for almost two days straight and was pleased with myself that they worked again (wanted them for a personal project - I like 2x7 / 3x7 setups). But this was before I added the "freezer test" to the sequence, and several months later they stopped working again. I sent them back to the ultrasonic for a bunch more passes until they passed the freezer test, and now they've been working fine since.

Purchased this Softride Traveler in 1997 to do a 2300 mile tour in 1998 of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The RXS system ran flawlessly. Had a service in Coleraine, but that was it. Photo is from 2016 in the middle of a rebuild, upgrade for The Transamerica. It's too bad the Traveler didn't catch on better. Excellent tourer. Spring loaded stem and carbon rail were really comfortable.

So, what happrned to the bike? When I moved to New Zealand I sold it as the extra cost to bring it was ridiculous. A couple in West Viginia got an excellent deal. In retrospect I should have paid the freight and brought it.