Bicycle shifter help needed

[AnthonyL]

My oldish bike has Shimano STX shifters, the front one, 3 speed being similar to this one shown:

A couple of days ago the cable snapped at the front derailleur end, leaving me in low gear. No problems I thought as I'd got a spare cable.

Push the old one out, put the new one in and no grip. Shifting 1 - 2

- 3 and back doesn't cause any cable movement.

The shifting clicks nicely into each position which is what all the videos and help I've found address, but I can find how to make the cable move, nor can I found clearly what makes it move.

Is there some technique to engage the cable on the shifter? I've tried various things. Or does it mean something further has worn?

[Tim+]

You?ve fitted it wrong. ;-)

Exactly what you?ve done wrong is less easy to work out without more info and pictures. Presumably you?ve clamped the new cable inner to the changer mechanism by the chain ring? Does the cable move there when you move the selector? If not, the problem presumably lies in the gear change lever control.

A split cable outer can cause the outer cable to ?concertina? when you pull on the cable leading to problems but that?s usually fairly obvious.

Tim

[newshound]

+1.

Once you get it connected properly, the Park Tool youtube videos for adjusting front and back derailleurs are particularly good, I thought.

[John Rumm]

If you have the right cable inner (i.e. with the small cylinder "stop" on the end), you should feed that into the lever, end down the small hole in the back of the shifter mechanism, and keep going until it appears at the front derailleur. If you then pull on the free end it should draw the cable stop up tight into the shifter mechanism. At that point you should feel it change position as you shift. If it's not doing that, then it't not engaged in the lever mechanism correctly. From there you can attach it to the shift lever on the front derailleur, adjust and you should be good to go.

Could be the shifter is broken, or it might just be the cable inner snagged on something and is not sitting in the right place in the shifter.

[AnthonyL]

Nothing I found clearly stated that the shifter should be in 1 when feeding the cable through it. I guess everyone else thought it too obvious.

Now to try and centralise the rear wheel which I took off to lubricated the bearings without due care and attention as to the position of the cones.

I don't remember having these issues 60yrs ago when servicing my bike. And why are so many different spanners and allen keys needed? I just remember two multitool spanners and a screwdriver being sufficient. And whilst I'm in <rant> mode - someone do a video for bike maintenance engineers in how to do a presentation. Disappearing 10 secs to find a tool - half the component out of frame, shadows over the tiny bits being adjusted, moving the part instead of holding it still.

[newshound]

One reason I recommend Park Tools videos

[AnthonyL]

Still suffer from some of the above problems, losing focus (usually when going in too close), camera man not keeping up with movement. But better than most agreed.

[Robert]

While you work out whats gone wrong, you can usually fix the bike chain on chain ring 2 by using the stop adjusters. But I am sure you know this about this temporary fix !

[Thomas Prufer]

Eh? Posh fix. The one I know is "stick a twig in the mechanism" -- somewhere in the opening of the parallogram thing, squeeze to crush the twig to get it just so...

Thomas Prufer

[David]

If you haven't already found it. Go to resource for all things bike.

HTH

Dave R

[AnthonyL]

Bookmarked.

You will see from an earlier posting that I've fixed it.