Have I forgotten how to shift?

[Bette]

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

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

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.

[aicabsolut]

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.

[VeloVT]

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!