Been a busier evening than expected.
My Avanti Circa 1 cross/commuter has had problems shifting; firstly on Monday in pouring rain and then again when used yesterday. I could only get 2 or 3 rear gears on Monday and by last night it was home on a single one.
"Must be the rain" thought I on Monday. "Must be a frayed cable" was Wednesday's idea.
So ... undo the cable. And the rear derailleur works. "Good; it's the cable rather than a broken rear derailleur."
Put in a new cable. And there's no gears. The shifter's clicking one way but not the other, even without a cable.
"Where's the double-tap-thing from the right SRAM shifter?" Ah! The shifter's lost it's 'shift'; i.e. it's broken. It'd
been iffy for a while but I'd sort of ignored that.
Now, I
was planning on swapping it to either the new Microshift 10-speed groupset I have sat in a box or to Shimano over Easter. It's
almost Easter so I might as well do the swap. And anyway, I hadn't a spare SRAM Rival RH shifter.
The Microshift set are new, but don't have concealed cables - which I prefer to have. And they were a bit clunky. So off to the
eBay pile they went, along with two spare SRAM Rival rear derailleurs and a couple of other bits. The used parts off the Avanti have also been cleaned and will be on eBay at some point as well.
A further hunt in the parts shed found some Ultegra 6700 shifters, a new 5700 rear derailleur and a used 6600 front derailleur plus clamp bracket. They'll do!
On they all went, with the new-ish chain cleaned. And I've spent the evening fitting new inner/outer brake/gear cables, new brake straddles, new brake pads to replace the worn front and rear ones. The bar tape was almost new so for now that's gone back on as well.
All seems to work nicely, and I'll have a short ride out tomorrow.
And that's the end of my dalliance with SRAM. I could never get on with the way the hoods felt, or it shifted, so back to Shimano it is.
