Road shifters "sticking"

[maillotpois]

How many miles do you have on your bike? shifters usually last a long time....

If you have Campy you don't need to replace them; they can be overhauled pretty easily at your bike store. Not so sure about Shimano but pretty sure you would have to replace.

Be sure you don't have any "gunk" gunking up (technical term) the cable feeds under your bottom bracket. Build of up sport drink, dirt, dead worms and frog guts down there can impede shifting.

[han-grrl]

oh, they are several years old. Shimano 105's.
probably many thousands of km on them, as i bought the bike off a friend, and i know i put in at least 2000 in the last couple of years (when i actually put on a computer on the bike)

[HoosierGiant]

Be sure you don't have any "gunk" gunking up (technical term) the cable feeds under your bottom bracket. Build of up sport drink, dirt, dead worms and frog guts down there can impede shifting.

Amen to that!

Had my road bike at the LBS last fall to repair a cable that had snapped right at the shifter. When I went back 10 days later to test ride before bringing it home, couldn't shift at all. A quick inspection revealed that the cables were gummed up at the bottom bracket. Gatorade. Riding every day kept them broken loose and at least usable; sitting for 10 days allowed everything to seize up into a goopy, gloppy mess. Since then, I've switched to Teflon cables and make sure to wipe down my bottom bracket after every ride.

And, having finished a ride this spring that left my bike a writhing, wriggling mess -- worms hanging everywhere -- I can vouch for them gumming up your cables also.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

worm jerky.....mmmmmm......

[DebW]

Also possible for the cable to get frozen into the housing by rust, or crimps in the cable or housing to cause poor shifting. Check cables before deciding that the lever is stuck.

[aicabsolut]

if you can't find anything up with the cables, try putting a little bit of lube in the shifter

[SadieKate]

Any gunk in the levers themselves? Do you turn the bike upside down to fix flats possibly burying the shifters in the dirt?

[han-grrl]

tonight was cleaning out the drawer night...
tomorrow night i tackled the bike clean up

both bikes need some major TLC...

thanks for all the advice ladies...this is super helpful!
i'll let ya know what i find in there (alhough after worms, and gunk and major old gatorade...yew!!)

[RoadRaven]

Be sure you don't have any "gunk" gunking up (technical term) the cable feeds under your bottom bracket.

To gunk ?? Gunking ?? Gunky ?? Gunked ?? Gunkerated ?? Gunkatrion

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gunk
Main Entry: gunk
Pronunciation: \ˈgəŋk\
Function: noun
Etymology: from Gunk, trademark for a cleaning solvent
Date: 1943
: filthy, sticky, or greasy matter
— gunky \ˈgəŋ-kē\ adjective


And more philosophically from Wikipedia...

In mereology, the term gunk applies to any whole whose parts all have further proper parts. That is, a gunky object is not made of indivisible atoms. In contrast, an atomic individual is entirely decomposable into atoms.

Gunk is an important test case for accounts of the composition of material objects: for instance, Ted Sider has challenged Peter Van Inwagen's account of composition because it is inconsistent with the possibility of gunk. Sider's argument also applies to a simpler view than Van Inwagen's: mereological nihilism, the view that only material simples exist. If nihilism is necessarily true, then gunk is impossible. But, as Sider argues, because gunk is both conceivable and possible, nihilism is false, or at best a contingent truth.

Of course! now I understand!