I bought a sram 10 speed rear double tap lever/shifter a year ago. It has about 1500 miles? Lately it has developed a few sticky spots that are like pushing against a wall. You force through it and it shifts but then it ratchets in the next gear. Then you single tap it and the ratcheting goes away and it stays in the gear it originally shifted to. Occasionally when this happens it shifts up 2 gears. It is random and doesn't happen all the time but it happens a dozen times on one 50 mile ride. It is very annoying. Sometimes when you shift the chain hunts up and down and you click it once and it either stabilizes on the current gear or goes down one. It is not adjustment of cable or derailleur because when it works it works beautifully.

I removed the hood this weekend and it appeared to have globs of factory grease contaminated with metal filings. It looked black and gritty. I cleaned it out and put fresh grease in but on this weekends ride it still happened several times. It is under warranty and my lbs said I just had to pay shipping and chances are sram would just replace it. But it could take a couple weeks plus my bar tape may not survive the process of removing and I may need to replace the shift cable upon reassembly. Is this common for these shifters? My lbs said shimano tends to be more reliable but srams tech support was better than shimano so it was kind of a trade off. I wish I could find a simple cure and fix it myself.

8000 miles on Rival 10 speed.
6000 miles on Red 22.
800 miles on Rival 1x

Not a single problem.

Bring it back to the dealer and have the Sram rep look at it.

Had a SRAM Rival DT lever go kaput. Took to my LBS and he shipped off for a replacement from SRAM. No questions asked! Did not even buy this particular bike from the LBS.

You checked, changed the cable, housings, escpec. the rear loop?

Yes it is not those. The "wall" is a mechanical feeling as if the ratcheting mechanism sticks and won't release. Plus the factory grease appeared to be full of metal dust. It was all black and gritty looking.

The obvious solution is to get another bike. Something's always breaking or needing maintenance so one should always have at least one extra bike for these types of incidents.

I haven't heard the failure rates of SRAM being significantly different than campy or shimano. I don't think your issue is common.

Sactly what this cyclist said. While you're dropping off your bike at the lbs, pick up another one for situations just like this one...

Here's some more: https://www.youtube.com/results?searc...hifter+rebuild

100% reliable to not make me want to use it or ride it.

That said, this is first thread I've read of SRAM shifter breaking prematurely.

Watching that first video kind of makes me wonder if the same part is failing in mine.

I have 2 other bikes. This one is just one of my favs...

SRAM shifter failures are pretty common. So common that SRAM usually replaces them without any hassle, even beyond the warranty expiration.

How common? What is the failure rate of sram vs campy or shimano? You have no idea or data to substantiate your claim. All manufacturers replace broken parts without a hassle so that doesn't say much.

Sram reliability is as good as any others. Sram is known mostly for its shift levers snapping, which isn't terribly surprising given the lighter weight material Sram uses. Shimano levers don't snap in the same way, but they do tend to eat cables, which cause their own hassles.

Between my wife an I, we've run through the following sets of Sram shifters:
Old Red 10s: 2
New Red 10s: 1
Red 22: 1
Force 10s: 2
Rival 10s 1
S-series Hyrdo 10s: 1

We've sold some of them, including one set of the old Red 10s shifters and one set of Force 10s, but I'm still running the first set of Red shifters that I bought in 2008. They've been on three frames now and crashed multiple times. If I had to guess mileage, it would probably be around 40k miles on those shifters. So far, I've had no issues. But my experience is only N=8. (If you add MTB, my wife has an NX set up on her bike.)

My other complaints about Sram durability are the RD pulleys tend to crack, and I've had issues with Aerolink brakes snapping due to over-torquing the cable crimp bolt.

And as far as warranty goes, from my experience, Sram has been a lot more stringent in its warranty replacements lately.

You have no idea what experience I have in the industry. I have worked as a lead mechanic/shop manager in a very high volume shop, and I dealt with this problem far more frequently than with Shimano and Campagnolo combined. It is a well known problem, even though you are unaware of it.

You didn't answer my question. If you have legitimate data let's hear it. Perhaps you don't see many campy issues due to the relatively low volume of campy sales vs sram.

What is your estimate of the failure rate of sram shifters? 1%, .1%, .01%? What is 'common'?

I don't know either one of you guys but I will take a stab at this. I can tell you for my past experience as an auto technician what common problems and failures we're in the market on different makes and models of vehicles. I can't give you stats or hard data but I can tell you what was common and what was not based on what we seen in the shop on a daily basis. I think that is what he is trying to say and I doubt he has actual paper stats to back it up but I'm sure he knows what he's saying.

I'm not.

Funny my bike shop mechanic, who I know and trust knows what he's doing and has many years of experience as well as Factory training, pretty much told me the same thing last night via a text message. I don't think he would say that if he hadn't seen more of it himself.

I just want to State for the record that I actually love the DoubleTap shifter. So I'm planning on getting it warrantied and enjoying the replacement. I just hope that the one they replace it with is going to last longer maybe it will be an improved design or something?

In the shop that I ran, Shimano outsold SRAM by over 10-1, but overwhelmingly the #1 shifter failure issue was with SRAM. Exact numbers I couldn't tell you, but it wasn't close.

The problem is well known in the industry, and luckily SRAM doesn't hassle most shops when they ask for warranty replacement parts. Often SRAM upgrades the shifter when possible.

Exactly.

I don't care what you believe. I know what the truth is.

My dealer ordered this shifter for me a year ago. Is it possible that the distributor that he got it from sold him an older shifter from old inventory? I have heard that some of the older ones had problems that they had supposedly redesigned and fixed.

Sram has certainly had its issues. I've seen enough reports of levers snapping to accept that it's a fairly common occurrence, even if it has not happened to me personally. And Sram's hydro disc brake and Zipp hub recalls in recent years certainly gave them a bad rep. But since then, I think Sram has been pretty good about fixing their reliability issues.

In fact, one of the shops I use has recently started pushing Sram drivetrains for MTB over Shimano, which is a big change for them. A few years ago, they steered everyone to Shimano. They still think Sram disc brakes suck though.

And no system is perfect. As mentioned, Shimano has developed a reputation for eating cables, and when they snap in shifter, they can be a PIA to fix.

As far as the OP's issue, that's not something I have heard before.

It feels as if the ratcheting pawl gets hung up and doesn't want to lift to move to the next tooth. I would say it works 95% of the time but then out of the blue it just happens. I haven't been able to narrow it down to if it's a certain gear that it always happens in or if it can be random gears all I know is when it happens it's frustrating.

The failure rate may be higher than shimano but that doesn't make it common. It would be difficult for sram to be as successful as they have been if their parts were not reliable. When we're you in the shop? Companies are constantly evolving and hopefully improving their products.

Another reason I don't think it's common is the price of sram shifters seem reasonable. If they had an excessively high failure rate their warranty costs would be high and they would either reflect that in their prices or live with lower profitability. SRAM is a private company so their financial data is not public but they appear to be a profitable and growing company.