Have I forgotten how to shift?

I have had my new Cannon for about a month now, well maybe not that long yet. Anway, I have had to learn a whole different way of shifting. My old Trek MTB had grip shifters on it, just twist the handle bar and walla, your shifted. The new bike has the shimano thumb shifter, click my finger on the right to go up on the back ring and the thumb to go down. The big front ring is the opposite, you cilck with the finger to go down and push with the thumb to go up. Well, I am having a terrible time with the chain dropping when I push with my thumb to go up from 1st to 2nd. It's driving me crazy because there is nothing wrong with the bike, DH can do it just fine while peddaling the bike with his hands and shifting the gears, LBS, same thing.
But when I get on the bike and actually ride, get a good pace going and go to shift up, probably 1/3 of the time I drop the chain, have to stop and put it back on. I'll get going again, and it will change just fine a few times.
What am I doing wrong. I have tried pushing hard and quick, I've tried pushing and keeping my thumb pushed in until I see the chain in the ring. There doesn't seem to be any ryme or reason to it.
I may be exagerating some with the amount, but today we road 17 miles and I had to stop 4 times to put my chain back on and it actually happened a couple of more times but I pushed it up to the 3rd ring real quick to see if it would pop in so I wouldn't have to stop.
Is it just a learning process with the new shifters? I hope so, because that gets really frustrating.

Donna, I had that EXACT same problem on my hybrid (same gear system)

You haven't got a bottle cage that when a bottle is in it, pushes down on the front derailer do you??

I did and it caused a WHOLE host of problems with my chain ring (on the large derailer.

(just a thought)

No my bottle cage isn't touching anything. Once you fixed that did it fix your problem? DH has adjusted it for me and the LBS that I got it from adjusted it before I took it home and made sure everything was going smooth.
I have a feeling I'm just not holding my tounge right, but haven't figured out the sweet spot to hold my tounge in. LOL

I will have DH look and make sure nothing else is pushing or touching it, but from what I can see nothing is.
My DH told me today he didn't know what was going on, because it works fine for him. I told him "fine you get on it and you ride it".
I really love this bike, but that one little thing is driving me buggy. It's not all the time, but it's seems to take a spell on a ride where it does it constantly and then I will have a ride where it may not do it at all.

Are you perhaps shifting too "quickly"? I guess what I'm really asking is that when you shift, do you push quickly, or hold the shifter a couple of seconds before letting go??

I did not have a problem with chain coming off, but I did have a problem of not being able to shift to the big ring and it was because I wasn't holding the shifter, just pushing it and letting go. I have Shimano gears.

I hope I am explaining this in a manner that makes sense. Hope its info you can use.

I had that same problem on my mountain bike, and it was because I didn't realize there was sort of a knack to shifting in the front. The rear is easy, and my road bike is easy, but there is kind of a sweet spot on that front shifter. My husband could shift it find but I had all kinds of trouble until I figured out that I was not holding it hard or long enough.

I have low-end Shimano components. I have wondered if upgrading might make it less of an issue, but I think it is something I can probably just work out with some practice.

Xeney - My Giant has Ultegra and I had a HARD time with the front gears. Same thing as you. Not long enough or hard enough. My Bianchi is 105's and so far it shifts like a dream...... so... don't know if that means Ultegra isn't much of an improvement over 105's, or that it means upgrading would just cost money and not fix the problem.

Actually, your DH SHOULD get on and ride it. Or your LBS guy. Bikes behave differently when the weight of a real person is on them than when someone's shifting gears and moving the pedals by hand. Sounds like some kind of chain or derailleur adjustment might be necessary.

In case this is an issue, I'll mention it. I did this when I first switched to Rapid Fire shifters. You can't really shift both front and rear at once. Shift one, then the other. Once I figured this out, no more chain drop. Maybe this is waaaayy too stupid to even mention, but hey, I'm ok with admitting my own learning curve, which was STTTTEEEEEEPPP when I started biking. I have no idea how experienced you are, so no offense intended......

totally off topic - note to TALI - I am not afraid of spiders but your avitar freaks me out!!! :eek:

Good heavens no I'm not offended Tali, ecspecially when someone is just trying to help. I do just shift one at a time. I don't think I would have enough cordination to try to do both at once. LOL


I'm with you CyclChyk on the spider, I'm not afraid of them either but hers does look creepy. :rolleyes:

My shifters are ultegra and I think there is only one step up from that so I don't think upgrading is needed or the problem.

Thank you so much Salsa, I have tried to tell them the same thing. I kept mentioning that maybe it was only doing it while the weight was on there and such. I'm glad to know that I am not crazy thinking that. LOL
I think I am going to have him do that today, as long as he marks it where it belongs for me.
It reminds me of when a car has a problem and you tell the mechanic or your husband and it never does it with them. Irritates me. LOL

I have 105s on my Giant and have had the problem with it coming off the front. I've done 2 things that seem to have helped. 1 is to shift way up in the back before shifting up in the front.

The other is to continue pedaling until I'm positive it's off. Shifting up in the front is a little noisy sometimes so I was assuming it was slipping off. But stopping pedaling simply didn't give it the time to finish the shift so it would fall since I had stopped in mid-shift. So try pedaling a crank or 2 more and see if the chain picks up.

HTH

What Susan says is true- sometimes it needs a few extra round "between" gears in front before it picks itself up to the next gear. When this happens to me it's often because I've pushed the lever a bit TOO far and am overshooting the goal. I have bar end shifters, but the problem sounds similar. Try to let up on your pedalling force right as you shift- just sort of float your feet during the actual shift process- pedalling hard makes the gear/chain change more problematic.

Shift to off topic

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Originally Posted by DDH

I'm with you CyclChyk on the spider, I'm not afraid of them either but hers does look creepy. :rolleyes:

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Yeah, it was creepy when I saw it crawling across the kitchen floor! :eek: That darned things body was as big as my big toe!!! I think the only reason I didn't freak out was b/c we were in New Zealand at the time and I was more of the "Gee, look at this enormous spider. I've never seen one like this before" mode. But I was glad I didn't see another in the house we were living in, or anywhere else, again!

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Originally Posted by Tali

Shift to off topic


Yeah, it was creepy when I saw it crawling across the kitchen floor! :eek: That darned things body was as big as my big toe!!! I think the only reason I didn't freak out was b/c we were in New Zealand at the time and I was more of the "Gee, look at this enormous spider. I've never seen one like this before" mode. But I was glad I didn't see another in the house we were living in, or anywhere else, again!

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hhmm that does look nasty but if it was in NZ then it looks nastier than it is. No highly venomous spiders in NZ........another reason why I love the place.:D

:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by DDH

I have had my new Cannon for about a month now, well maybe not that long yet. Anway, I have had to learn a whole different way of shifting. My old Trek MTB had grip shifters on it, just twist the handle bar and walla, your shifted. The new bike has the shimano thumb shifter, click my finger on the right to go up on the back ring and the thumb to go down. The big front ring is the opposite, you cilck with the finger to go down and push with the thumb to go up. Well, I am having a terrible time with the chain dropping when I push with my thumb to go up from 1st to 2nd. It's driving me crazy because there is nothing wrong with the bike, DH can do it just fine while peddaling the bike with his hands and shifting the gears, LBS, same thing.
But when I get on the bike and actually ride, get a good pace going and go to shift up, probably 1/3 of the time I drop the chain, have to stop and put it back on. I'll get going again, and it will change just fine a few times.
What am I doing wrong. I have tried pushing hard and quick, I've tried pushing and keeping my thumb pushed in until I see the chain in the ring. There doesn't seem to be any ryme or reason to it.
I may be exagerating some with the amount, but today we road 17 miles and I had to stop 4 times to put my chain back on and it actually happened a couple of more times but I pushed it up to the 3rd ring real quick to see if it would pop in so I wouldn't have to stop.
Is it just a learning process with the new shifters? I hope so, because that gets really frustrating.

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Hi Donna,,,, I was reading about your shifting delima,,,I was out riding with my new Specilalized Road Bike just shy of 30 days old with 75 miles new road miles. Well I experienced the most difficult bike ride ever. I could not shift up in my higher gears, (all new concept with no idea what gear you are in because it does not show us) I was beside myslef for the awful ride my daugheter and I had. I felt like an old lady on her bike for the first time. I called my Bike store LL BEAN in Freeport Maine (20 minutes away for me) they were able to fix me up. Here is what they found. THe pedals had become loose and was causing to much distance so I could not shift up to my higher gears, ( I thought I was haveing a senior moment and cold not remeber what I had done to shift a few days before) was I happy to find out I wasn not so senior moement and the problm was fixed at the shop and I was back out today for a 25 mile ride and all was well. Have your shop check out the pedals. My chain came off 3 times on that day. Ugh Hope you find out the problem soon. Bette Boop from Maine:cool:

On my 3 month old road bike with bar end shifters- this past week or so I noticed it was slowly getting harder and harder to shift the front 3 gears back and forth. Finally I felt like I would have use two hands, and my thumb was getting a callous! That's when DH and I investigated and did some reading up on my model of shifters to try to solve the problem. It turns out the cable from the front left shifter to the front derailer was getting stretched out. We loosened it at the front derailer area, and pulled the cable end a bit tighter and re-screwed it down again. (my first instinct would have been to LOOSEN that cable, but go figure!) Problem was fixed, and now my left hand shifting is even better than when the bike was brandee new. :)

Is the problem when you're switching big rings or does it happen with front and rear shifting?

My LBS told me never to cross the chain. Meaning that when you're going into the big ring, you want to be on a rear gear that's close to even with the big one, maybe 2 or 3 from your smallest. Same with going back to the small ring, you want to be in a pretty low gear in the back. Doing it the other way around supposedly wears out your derailleur but I'd bet it'd be easier to get the chain to slip off that way too.


I've got 105 front, ultegra rear. And I noticed a difference in shifting smoothness between this and trying bikes that were full 105.

This is a very simple suggestion, but is it possible you just need to have the derailleur adjusted? Maybe one of the limiter screws isn't right?

I got my first road bike in the spring of this year -- Felt with Ultegra, 27spd with triple chain ring (love the bike more than I ever thought it would be possible to love a bike <<sigh>>>...). When I first started riding more I was dropping the chain when trying to shift into the granny gear nearly every steep hill -- and in VT, there are a lot of big hills. Now, dropping a chain going up a steep hill when you're still new at the whole clipless business... not too much fun. I was convinced for some reason that the problem was related to having a triple, and was actually giving thought to swapping out the whole drive train for a double/10spd cassette. Stupid me. Took the bike in for a tune up, mentioned the problem, and they totally fixed it by tweaking the derailleur adjustment. Haven't dropped the chain since.

Good luck!