DX 7-speed MTB thumbshifters

[Zog The Undenia]

Anyone ever taken the indexed one apart? Mine was getting
sticky and gear changing was atrocious, so I've disassembled
it (if you do this there's a sneaky left hand thread on the
main nut holding everything together), cleaned all the
parts, which aren't worn, and reassembled in the exact
reverse order. Needless to say something is not right and
the shift lever hardly moves, although the friction/SIS
lever works OK. I'm thinking there must be a knack to
getting the shift lever in the right position relative to
the baseplate against the force of the spring, before
putting the two little steel balls in - a bit like turning a
rear mech pivot bolt before putting the circlip on.

The old 6-speed one I took apart years ago had about 4 parts
- this has more like 12! I blame the Light Action gubbins,
which is why there's a fairly powerful spring in there.

[Simon Brooke]

in message <40dee20e.0@entanet>, Zog The Undeniable
('hrothgar19@yahoo.com') wrote:

> Anyone ever taken the indexed one apart? Mine was getting
> sticky and gear changing was atrocious, so I've
> disassembled it (if you do this there's a sneaky left
> hand thread on the main nut holding everything together),
> cleaned all the parts, which aren't worn, and reassembled
> in the exact reverse order. Needless to say something is
> not right and the shift lever hardly moves, although the
> friction/SIS lever works OK. I'm thinking there must be a
> knack to getting the shift lever in the right position
> relative to the baseplate against the force of the
> spring, before putting the two little steel balls in - a
> bit like turning a rear mech pivot bolt before putting
> the circlip on.

SRAM gripshifts (at least the lower models) are quite cheap
and _vastly_ better. Today I did my first reasonably long
trip on my Mantra, which has Shimano XT mechs but came with
no shifters so I experimentally fitted fifteen quid SRAM
ones because I wanted to try something different, and I'm
hugely impressed. Shifting is almost gestural, you can
change as many cogs at the back as you want in one go, and
you can _trim_ _the_ _front_, which is a thing which has
always annoyed me about 'rapidfire'.

--
simon@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke)
http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Due to financial constraints, the light at the end
of the tunnel has been switched off.

[Jon Senior]

Simon Brooke simon@jasmine.org.uk opined the following...
> SRAM gripshifts (at least the lower models) are quite
> cheap and _vastly_ better.

The cheapness comes with a price. The mechanism for
holding the rotating column into the base is a small
plastic tag. After 1 week on the bent, this snapped.
Please note that there is no force on the handlebars at
all. I agree that the shifting is good, but I don't expect
to have to replace shifters on a weekly basis. My bar-end
levers are now on order!

Jon