I’ve been frustrated by my bike of late: gear changes were getting sluggish, and at times it was plain refusing to shift gear. I replaced the obviously tired chain, and got an improvement for a while, but then things got markedly worse. I misguidedly tried fiddling with the adjusters (some of it in desperation while riding and needing a higher gear), which resulted in me buggering up the thread of the adjuster at the shift lever. The levers are SIS combined brake and gear levers, and come as a pair, so it was off to Halfords website (as the usual suspects like CRC didn’t stock them) for replacements.

Fitting them was mostly fine, though delayed by one pingpuckit (the cable clamp on the front deraileur) making a bid for freedom under the cooker (the kitchen being the only practical place for bike maintenance in December), but adjustment took a while. If you ever have need to adjust bike gears, this is the place to go, but read the rest of this post first.

Deraileur (or derailer) gears are a pretty crude device, just pushing the chain sideways to change gear, and they’re also prone to damage, and in the line of all the mud, grit, and water from the road or canal towpath. I don’t do hundreds and hundreds of miles, but this year has seen me increase my mileage by a lot, and I’ve been out in the mud and had to hose down the bike a fair bit.

Long story short, is that I hadn’t noticed how stiff the control cables had become. As the new levers came with brake and gear cales, all have been replaced, and the smoothness and ease of both braking (my bike has cable-operated discs) and gearchanges is amazing. I suppose I should realise that increased miles on gritty towpaths means increased maintenance, and also learn that generally, adjustments are sometimes better left alone- look at the basics. This also shows why hydraulic brakes, hub gears, and even electronic shifters (yes, bikes now can have CANBus and ECUs) are popular with more serious cyclists- in fact, BrownhillsBob’s quote that (IIRC) “If deraileurs were invented today they’d get laughed at” seems even more sensible for a mountain bike or hybrid. On an outgoing road bike, their efficiency over a hub gear might make more sense.