I finally found some time to finish up my caad9 build and of course I run into a problem. My left Record ultra-shift lever is not pulling enough cable to move the FD over to the big ring. It feels almost like it's not pulling any cable at all. When I pull the down tube cable to the side and create a lot of tension, I can feel the cable getting tighter and looser, but just barely. When I don't create this extra tension it doesn't move at all. There is already a lot of tension in the cable.

Is it normal to get like 6 clicks up and down with the left lever? I thought there was only like 2-3 trimming positions. Mine cranks up and down with 6 distinct clicks in between. Something doesn't seem right here, but I can't figure it out.

Any ideas??? Thanks in advance.

Make that 4 clicks throughout the lever travel...

Still don't know why it's not pulling cable and moving the FD.

Peel back the hood and observe the mechanism as you operate the lever. The cable head should be in its "socket" and that part of the shifter should be rotating when you shift, and moving the cable. Perhaps you don't actually have the cable routed through the shifter correctly.

There should be 6 clicks on the left shifter and it should pull about .65 inch of cable. Take the cable loose from the FD, put a piece of masking tape around the cable, near the down tube stop and measure the cable pull, if in doubt. As others have noted, maybe you haven't got the cable head seated in the socket.

If the cable is improperly attached to the FD, it will be hard to move the finger lever and only take two clicks to cover the full range of travel. The proper amount is 3 clicks. A 4-click setup can also be made, but it's not quite what Campy intended. The additional clicks are used for a triple FD. Prior to ultrashift, the left lever had 12 clicks, but even a triple FD only needed 7.

I assume that you also know to shift the thumb button all the way down before attaching the cable to the FD and then use the barrel adjuster to apply more tension. I also assume that the big ring limit screw is out far enough to allow the FD to move far enough to the left. This can be tested by hand, without the cable attached.

Bikes with no barrel adjuster are trickier to get set up. To get enough tension, first set the little ring limit screw, so the chain has minimal clearance with the left side of the cage, in the little ring and largest cog. Then deliberately tighten the screw (CW) by 1/2-1 turn. Pull the cable tight, with pliers and tighten the cable clamp bolt. Then return the low limit screw to it's normal position. If done correctly, you'll have more tension on the cable than you could ever get by pulling on it.

My guess is what the other guys mentioned...cable head isn't in the socket. Make sure when you thread the cable thru the hole in the outboard wall of the lever body, the shifter thumb button has dumped the racket to the first click. Otherwise the cable won't thread thru the socket hole in the racket arm...you will just thread the cable up thru the lever body and bypass the mechanism. This is a common mistake...pull the cable all the way out and start over if the cable doesn't move with when you push on the lever behind the brake handle.

make sure the cable go thru the winding pulley inside the shifter, when you hear the third click, the chain should be on the big ring, if not the tension is not enough.

Thanks guys. The furniture people just came and delivered some stuff so I had to deal with them. Going to go back there and try again..I'll keep you posted.

You guys were right. The cable never went through the proper hole. It went around it or something.

I'm a little worried though..I was working both levers pretty hard while troubleshooting. The cable was under tension so I'm worried that I wore down some nylon or damaged something in the process. When looking into the hole with a flashlight I saw what appeared to be a groove worn from the cable rubbing. I hope I didn't mess anything up.

Either way, it works perfectly now. This is my first experience with Campagnolo shifting and I am totally blown away with the front shifting quality. I wasn't expecting it to be so nice. On par or very close to Shimano and much better than SRAM. I think I have the RD dialed in pretty good, but the instructions were sort of confusing. It says to put the chain on the 5th smallest cog and then adjust the RD until the top pulley is in line with the 4th smallest cog. Doing this results in the chain moving to the 4th cog (obviously) and screws things up. What am I missing here???

Just do it like this.... lower the RD up to the smallest cog, alling the RD with the smallest cog using the lower adjustment screw, once is allign... click the lever 4 times (5th cog)... then play with the cable tension adjuster to move the RD to match the position of the 5th cog.

Move the RD up and down... you should be almost ready to go.

Move the lever up to the biggest cog.. 9 clicks. If you are short adjust using the upper RD screw... once the rd is in the upper cog and the chain is centered in there you play with the shifting a tiny bit but pretty much you should be ready to go after that. Generally the adjustments screws are barely touched tho so big chance you dont need to touch them.

Sent you a msg if you want to come over if you still have problems with the adjustment.

Thanks ultraman6970. Got it shifting perfectly already, but I'll definitely try that once I need to readjust everything.

One thing I really like about Campagnolo is how they use springs on all the adjustment screws to keep them from moving. There are so many nice touches to this group and the shifting is flawless. I just took it out for the first test ride after the super bowl ended, and it rides like an absolute dream.