Oh the things you'll learn...
Last night I did a short 10 mile ride to go get my Metallica tickets from a friend for Sunday's concert at Soldier Field. I made it ALMOST all the way home before my grip shifter for the front derailer decided to break internally while on a hill.
The shifter pretty much ate itself. Internally, there was a lot of broken stuff going on. Plastic literally flew out of the casing when I got it open.
Luckily, I have a second bike that has the exact same shifters on it. What does that mean for me? I got a crash course in bike repair. First I had to get the grips off. I don't wish this on anyone. It wasn't easy at all. Once that was off, on each bike, I had to unlatch the cable from the derailer, get the cable off the bike, and remove the shifter itself.
That's when the fun started!
I took the bad shifter off the current bike, pulled my old shifter from the Mongoose that gets zero love these days, and... the cable was too short. Great. Now I'm thinking I have to get all sorts of new gear, new cables, new grips. Not the case. I was able to get the ORIGINAL cable from the bike on to the replacement shifter and routed through.
I set the front derailer, hopped on the bike (it was on the trainer the whole time) and it works better than it ever did! It probably needed an adjustment for a while and I just didn't notice.
In the end, I'm glad this happened now and not out on the road during the ride in August. I'll probably replace all my cables prior to the ride just to be safe as well as my grips and possibly new shifters. They were not that expensive on Amazon last I checked.
We are 21% to goal and counting! The ride is August 5th and 6th this year and I believe we can actually make this goal.
Looking to donate monetarily, or volunteer? The links to do so are listed here for you.
Donate to the team
Join the team and ride with me this year!
Volunteer and help BikeMS!
The shifter pretty much ate itself. Internally, there was a lot of broken stuff going on. Plastic literally flew out of the casing when I got it open.
Luckily, I have a second bike that has the exact same shifters on it. What does that mean for me? I got a crash course in bike repair. First I had to get the grips off. I don't wish this on anyone. It wasn't easy at all. Once that was off, on each bike, I had to unlatch the cable from the derailer, get the cable off the bike, and remove the shifter itself.That's when the fun started!
I took the bad shifter off the current bike, pulled my old shifter from the Mongoose that gets zero love these days, and... the cable was too short. Great. Now I'm thinking I have to get all sorts of new gear, new cables, new grips. Not the case. I was able to get the ORIGINAL cable from the bike on to the replacement shifter and routed through.
I set the front derailer, hopped on the bike (it was on the trainer the whole time) and it works better than it ever did! It probably needed an adjustment for a while and I just didn't notice.
In the end, I'm glad this happened now and not out on the road during the ride in August. I'll probably replace all my cables prior to the ride just to be safe as well as my grips and possibly new shifters. They were not that expensive on Amazon last I checked.
We are 21% to goal and counting! The ride is August 5th and 6th this year and I believe we can actually make this goal.
Looking to donate monetarily, or volunteer? The links to do so are listed here for you.
Donate to the team
Join the team and ride with me this year!
Volunteer and help BikeMS!
Comments
Post a Comment