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What A Pain!
I couldn't stand it any longer, I had to install my Albatross bars. It seemed like a fairly straightforward job, remove the brakes and bar end shifters from my drop bars and re-install them on my new bars. Nothing too difficult and by doing the work myself I figured I would save some money. A few minutes later I had snapped the bolt that expands the mechanism in the bar end and I had damaged some of the soft metal on the shifter when I struggled to remove the remaining portion from inside the handlebar. After a little work with the Dremmel tool I may have salvaged the shifter. Of course now I wished I had waited till Monday and taken my bike to the shop.Heres where the part snapped.
If the shifter is still workable I may buy a pair of Paul's Thumbies. If the shifters no good I'll either go with downtube shifters or buy a pair of these cheap ($13) thumb shifters from Rivendell. Now I remember why I pay people to work on my bikes.
I had similar difficulty in changing out the handlebars on my LHT. I didn't break the shifters, but I didn't put them back together correctly, either. I eventually broke down and had a shop fix them, and wished I'd had them swap the bars in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI want to learn more about working on bikes, but it's frustrating when I mess something up like this.
There really isn't much info on downtube/ bar end shifter maintenance on the internet. That may change as there seems to be several new retro style bikes out there outfitted with downtube shifters.
ReplyDeleteIt's going to be embarrassing when I have to roll my messed up bike into the shop.