On 8/4/21 1:19 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/7/2021 12:18 AM, James wrote:
On 7/4/21 2:09 pm, jbeattie wrote:
A few miles into my evening ride on my cable-shift Emonda -- with my
wife pushing me on her ebike, I shifted to go up the next hill and
snap -- immediate downshift into 34/11.Â* Great.Â* In the middle of a
9% grade, that turned at the top to another climb, but a short one.
I tacked a bit, got home and then jumped on the Di2 disc Synapse and
started over.Â* Heavier with fenders, etc., but still a nice bike.
The discs, BTW, don't drag at all. Thank Buddha for that reliable
Di2.

The good thing about the latest Ultegra levers is that there is a
trap door under the lever body, and you can remove one screw, take
out the door and grab the broken cable and end.Â* No more fishing it
out of the lever.

I hadn't heard about that. It sounds like a nice improvement.


This is the second time in 20 years on STI that
I've broken a cable. Before that I broke a friction bar-end cable in
the middle of a tour.Â* I had a spare.


I'm still waiting to break a cable after more than 30 years of using
cable actuated gears and brakes.

Do you replace them regularly? Could that be why?


What is regularly? I usually wait until the outer plastic is cracked
and rust is showing, then wait until the next time I replace handlebar
tape and replace cables and tape at the same time. Probably every 2-3
years or more? The tape gets replaced more often because I usually end
up wearing a hole in it somewhere.

But I've also learned to notice the first strands of the shift cable
breaking at the bar end control. They stick out and poke my finger, a
nice early warning system.

Once I had gear change problems and it turned out to be a couple of
broken strands in the Campagnolo Ergo lever body. I didn't need to
unscrew a secret trapdoor to extract the cable. I think Campagnolo
levers are much easier to work on. You can disassemble, clean and
reassemble them fairly easily.

--
JS