rousseau

Problem: The upshift lever on my Ergo shifter sticks. It's still functional, but it's not working the way it's supposed to. The issue may have just happened today, or it may have happened when I took the shifter to a plastic welder who tried to fix the upshift lever that I broke a few weeks ago (I've been using a downtube shifter ever since).

Here's the situation: A few weeks ago I stupidly snapped the upshift lever on my left shifter. I took it to a guy who does plastic welding, and he should have known better, but he melted goop onto each butt end of the two broken pieces and attempted to get them to stay together. They didn't, as I discovered the first time I tried to shift.

So I ordered a replacement upshift lever. It came today. I immediately went to my shed and disassembled the shifter as per video instructions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y5Sn_Jnkus), replaced the broken lever with the new one, and put it all back together. But now the upshift lever sticks when I shift up to the big ring.

Here's a quick video depicting the issue (click on image):



Is there a spring loose or needing replacing? Is it possible that I didn't tighten the spring enough as shown at 3:48 of the following instructional video?

clausen

Is the rubber on the hood touchings the lever?

mmmdonuts

I think your top return spring might not be hooked on correctly, @ 3:00 in the video. The other spring is the one released by the thumb lever and seems to be fine.

rousseau

I thought I'd hooked it on properly, but I guess I'll have to take everything apart and try again.

rousseau

Come to think of it, after reinstalling the plastic piece at 3:44 in the overhaul video (the one you thread the gear cable through) I recall that it was difficult to get it to shift all the way down with the thumb lever. You know how you have to downshift the thumb lever all the way so that you can thread the gear cable through the hole in that component and subsequently through the body of the shifter? I had to force the component into the final position by jabbing it with a screwdriver.

Can't believe I forgot this vital detail. So something's catching somewhere. Any idea what it might be?

rousseau

Well, I got it figured out. There were two things I got wrong.

1. I think I put the component that slips between the rings on the lever at 2:12 on wrong. I took the thing apart and did again, and this time I paid closer attention to its position between the rings.
2. I was tightening the washer at 4:06 too much. The video is silent, and doesn't specify how tight it should be. In the video it appears to be tightened to a fairly high tension, but when I did the same in "real life" the downshifting didn't work properly (not yet installed on the handlebar nor were the cables installed). I backed off on the tension and now it works perfectly.

Campag4life

Nice job OP!

mmmdonuts

Glad you got it working. The FD has a good amount of pull but you do want the levers to be able to shift unloaded through the full range without catching. I've done mine a couple of times and I hate winding that coil spring.

rousseau

The secret to winding that coil spring (3:48 in the video) is clamping it down with your free thumb, which I didn't bother doing for fifteen tries or so because...well, because I only learn things by banging my head against a wall hard and long enough until the concept sinks in. Or until it hurts so much that I have to stop. I was swearing loud enough to disturb the neighbours, probably, so I went back and watched the video again for clues. I finally got the hint from that large thumb that intrudes into the picture. It worked flawlessly the first try.

I would now like people to pay me an annual six-figure income to overhaul shifters five days a week with a month's holiday off in July to go to France. I would like to sit at a bench and do this kind of work at my leisure, but for a lot of money. I wonder if there are any openings in a shop somewhere for a guy like me?

55/Rad

No, but you can make decent money buying non working sets for next to nothing, overhauling and selling them on ebay. Even more when you learn the secrets to bringing old shimano sti's back to life.

55/Rad

rousseau

Well, I've been having a different but related problem, and I'm now at my wit's end. To wit: I can't get the Record titanium front derailleur I got as a replacement for the one I broke (in this thread) set up properly. There's a tiny window where it more or less works, but not optimally. Here's what I mean:

- I have to set it at least 6 or 7 mm above the big ring, not the 1 to 2 mm recommended in the guide. If I set it any lower the QS shifter will simply not click in, meaning that the derailleur will not stay in the big ring position, but will remain in the small ring position.
- Likewise, if I set the limit screw so that the big ring position is more than 1/2 mm from the crank arm then the derailleur will not click into the big ring position. At all.

This is frustrating. Could it be that the Record titanium FD is simply incompatible with the QS Ergo shifter? Or is there some adjustment I can do?

rousseau

For the reference of anyone searching for this particular problem years from now (hey, I've come across solutions in this forum that were ten years old!), let it be known that I'm a numb-nuts who does things wrong over and over again until finally, by some weird stroke of luck, I get it right.

The component at 3:16 in the video above? I originally put it in the wrong way round. The video is actually for the right/rear shifter, and shows a component with multiple teeth on both sides of it, but the corresponding component for the left/front shifter is actually asymmetrical, with multiple teeth on one side but just two on the other side. I'd originally positioned the side with the two teeth against the thumb lever, when I should have put the side with the multiple teeth against it.

So I switched it around today, and I've solved the problems given in my post of yesterday. It works now. D'oh!