twowheelies

I just did a little overhaul on my Bianchi San Lorenzo with dura ace 7700 groupset... everything is great now, except i can't shift my rear derailleur out of high gear! Also it seems like the new chain i put on is a little too big, although i replaced it with shimano and duplicated the exact number of links... which ended up being a little shorter than the original chain, as expected.

Anything jump out to anyone that could be wrong with this picture!? I've worked on all my own bikes going back to... well childhood, to tell the truth, and i've never experienced this kind of thing.

Thanks for the help.

DOS

Does the shifter shift without pulling cable or is it jammed? Could be the cable isn’t seated correctly inside the shifter or you connected the cable without the shifter in the neutral (shifted to highest setting). Disconnect the cable from the derailleur, shift the shifter through its setting to make sure it is pulling and releasing cable, then ensure the shifter is shifted to the neutral setting and the cable head is seated correctly, then reattach to the derailleur.

Chain length looks ok to me.

vespasianus

If you manually pull the rd cable, does the bike shift? If so, that would imply it is just a simple tension issue.

I also like to shift to the smallest rear cog (like you have now) and hold the cable while I shift up the cassette. I want to feel the tension change and know the shifter is taking up cable.

twowheelies

Thanks guys.

Yeah... I’m beginning to think it’s the shifter itself.

I of course always shift up to the highest gear (neutral, as you call it) before adjusting a derailleur, and make sure all of the cable is out before connecting it. I checked to make sure the cable was seated in the shifter several times, and it seemed fine. I mean, that part of it isn’t that complex... or at least i never thought so! And anyway the front derailleur cable seems seated properly, and it’s pretty much the same procedure.

when I down shift some cable does get pulled in, but not much, and it only “clicks” like 4 times... and it is a 9 speed setup. So either I’m really dumb about the way I’m seating the cable, or the shifter just happened to start having problems today. Either way it’s pretty weird...

MudPie

Can you pull on the exposed rear der cable just under the chain stay, while you pedal? When doing this, can you reach the full range of gears?

twowheelies

Yes, shifts fine that way. So it must be the shifter then...

MudPie

Well, the problem is somewhere from the chain stay to and including the shifter.
You mentioned you only get 4 clicks from the 9 speed shifter?
Try this: disconnect cable at rear der. Then, pull on der cable end with your fingers and operate the shifter. Do you get the expected number of shifter clicks?

twowheelies

No, hardly any action at all at the shifter.

cxwrench

Your chain is perfect. Remove the cable completely from the bike. Hit the paddle a bunch of times and make sure the shifter is in high gear position and ready for a cable to be installed. Those shifters rarely if ever break so you're most likely doing something wrong.

MudPie

I've had a couple of Ultegra briifters malfunction, almost as you describe. The pawls were not all engaging and presumed they suffered from dried out grease syndrome. Sometimes they would catch, but sometimes you move the paddle and nothing happens. It's an easy clean and relube., see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9657...ature=youtu.be

twowheelies

Funny, thats exactly what i did as part of the overhaul... maybe i didn't use enough lube. I'll try it again.

MudPie

Hopefully it will work after a second cleaning. When I initially flushed my brifters, I used WD40 to loosen and flush out old grease (my thought was WD 40 was cheaper and petroleum based to better dissolve grease). This did free up the shifting mechanism. Then flooded it with Clean Streak degreaser to remove the WD40 and let it dry as recommended in the video. I did spray the internals with Boeshield. However, I did not apply the grease as shown in the video. The grease seemed more of a dirt magnet and seems hard to pinpoint the pins/pivots/mechanisms without slathering it on and making a mess.. Anyways, it's been trouble free for years Let us know if a second cleaning worked..

canklecat

Ditto, the solvent/cleaner and lube stuff. Some old greases congeal almost like soft plastic or rubber and can be difficult to dislodge. I'm in the process of cleaning the old grease from some DA ST-7400 STI shifters and switching between three different spray solvents and lubes, revisiting them every other day or so. Every time I think I've got it all cleaned out another flush will dislodge yet another dried grease booger.

It's still not as bad as the green grease used on many German products in the 1940s-'70s, from camera lenses to airguns. That stuff dried like brittle plastic and could not be dissolved in any commonly available or safe solvent. Everything had to be disassembled and the stuff manually scraped out.

twowheelies

Ok so i took it all apart and lubed the sh*t out of it, with finish line spray lube, and i did slather on some teflon grease as well... and after working it in a couple minutes, i did start to get some action back out of the shifter. so i guess the degreasing i did initially washed all the lube away?

in any case i put it all back together and after indexing several times, test riding and just generally getting the stretch out of the new cable and tweaking the cable tightness, i can get 8 out of 9 gears... if i tighten up the cable enough, i can get 1-8, if i loosen it i get 2-9, all shifting super smoothly..

the problem is the first click downshifting, or last click upshifting - the shifter just doesn't give you any action on the cable...

is there more junk in there...? maybe i'll try again with the WD-40 treatment...