On Wed May 21 20:04:08 2025 Frank Krygowski wrote:
Last night we hosted a touring cyclist from Japan. He's ridden here from
NYC and is on his way to LA, by a route that I think is too ambitious,
given his time frame. He's a chef and was nice enough to cook dinner!
He's riding a Jamis touring bike, disc brakes, Tiagra 2x10, very heavily loaded.
This morning he headed west about 10 AM, trying to beat oncoming rain.
But at about 1 PM he sent me an email from 18 miles down the road,
saying his bike stopped shifting. He'd tried but failed to fix it
himself. Could I help? He thought he might have broken a rear shift
cable, but wasn't sure.
I didn't get the email until later, but when I did I drove off into
heavy traffic and rain to see if I could help. I took tools and spare
cables. On the way, I encountered him backtracking, about five miles
from my place - so having wasted about 30 miles. I loaded his bike onto
my car's rack and drove him to my LBS.
The mechanic there is an old friend of mine. I was able to convince him
to stop other work to fix the tourist's bike. Turns out that in
fiddling, the young guy had completely unscrewed the adjustable cable
stop on the rear derailleur. But fixing that still left complications.
This mechanic has long had the reputation of being the best in the area. (I've mentioned him before as the winner of the "fix a flat" race at a
local cycling picnic event.) Still, he was quite frustrated by the front Tiagra STI lever. He seemed to be having trouble getting it set to the
right condition to properly seat the cable end, then thread the cut end
of the cable into the (totally enclosed) cable housing. It wasn't
responding properly to the upshift or downshift levers.
Spraying the guts thoroughly with lubricant has been the only thing I've
ever done to fix STI. Eventually, doing that enabled him to get the
levers working again and allowed the repair to complete. As a result of
all this, the young guy is going to do an extra overnight here.
To me, it's justification for my preference for bar end shifters for
touring. I prefer simple devices with only visible problems.
Frank, the easiest way to tell if the cable is broke is to pull on it. The front derailleur cable is on the left hand side of the downtube and the right hand cable is the rear derailleur. If they are loose or pull out. they are disconnected for any of
several reasons. To fix itg first you must know the STI version. 8,9 and 10 versions are easy to recable and I'm sure that you wouldn't have any trouble. Deraillers are model specific for the 8,9 and 10 though the front derailleur is interchangeable. If
it is downtube STI levers, the 8,9 and 10 are interchangeable and you just set the limit screws.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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