Saturday, January 10, 2009

Shakedown

Previously, on Diablo Scott's Bike Blog...

"My shifting sucks! It skips and ghost shifts and won't stay in gear at all."

"I changed my cassette and chain and my shifting still sucks!"

"I'm sick of fiddling with my barrel adjusters... this sucks!"

"I put on all new cables and my shifting sucks! I can't use my 24t at all!"

I put on ANOTHER new cassette and chain and my shifting sucks even worse."

"Hmmmm. Maybe it's my shifters; I might as well go 10-speed, I'll need new shifter/brake levers, cassette, and chain, and bar wrap."

Last night finally got around to doing the work, hoping to be done in time for this morning's ride... worked till 11 o'clock, got up early this morning to finish but didn't get 'er done until 9:30. Mostly went OK but involved some head scratching and tool searching. When you change brifters you have to do all the cables too of course and it just took longer than I thought. Also, my Flight Deck computer mount is for a 9-speed and the hood inserts don't fit into 10-speed levers so now the fancy computer is mostly an odometer.

Anyway, for a shakedown cruise I rode from home to about a mile up North Gate Road and everything was perfect... I couldn't elicit a chain skip no matter what I did so I'm reasonably confident that it was the shifters that were the problem.




On the way down I stopped to take this photo and got a...

Dudley Driveby - I decided to follow him and see where he went. He had a station wagon parked at North Gate High.




Buggered up this cable job on the front derailleur... works for now but it won't last long.


The hoods feel quite a bit different from the 9-speed variety, I'll get used to it. The shifting action is a little lighter too.




Boy that extra gear in there (the 16 I think) is AWESOME!




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You keep writing about this Dudley guy, in almost every post. Now you show us picture of his car. I think all your readers want more. Just saying.

Anonymous said...

Darn. I was worried for a moment. I thought you were having one on me. That looks just like MY car, an Outback with a roof rack. But it isn't my bike. Whew....

Won't that new gear add weight and slow down your climbing?