DaveReading
Don't suffer fools gladly (must try harder!)
- Location
- Reading, obvs
... to borrow the old phrase about flying.
Halfway through a 10-mile ride to pick up my car after a service, I suddenly couldn't get the chain off the smallest cog on the cassette.
Ah, I said to myself, when I changed the cable a few weeks ago I can't have nipped up the clamp tightly enough. Strange, though, that the shifter felt a bit funny too.
As luck would have it, this happened just before the hilly bit of the ride, so I got a bit of practice honking up them where I'd usually have sat and spun. Got to the garage, picked up the car and slung the bike inside.
This morning, when I put the bike on the stand, the cable had indeed pulled through the clamp on the RD by about half an inch or so. But strangely, there wasn't half an inch of slack, in fact hardly any.
I discovered to my alarm that the brifter had swallowed the slack in the cable and wasn't interested in giving it back. After taking the hood off, I could see a loop of cable but no sign of the nipple. Pulling through the free end of the cable and tugging on it didn't help, and it took about half a hour of manipulating the up and down levers before I could persuade the nipple to emerge from where it had been jammed in the mechanism. Even then it wasn't going to surrender until I put a pair of mole grips on it and managed ever so gently to pull the cable free.
Moral of the story: obviously do up the cable clamp on the derailleur properly and, if you don't and everything goes slack, don't under any circumstances waggle the shifter or it will eat the cable.
Halfway through a 10-mile ride to pick up my car after a service, I suddenly couldn't get the chain off the smallest cog on the cassette.
Ah, I said to myself, when I changed the cable a few weeks ago I can't have nipped up the clamp tightly enough. Strange, though, that the shifter felt a bit funny too.
As luck would have it, this happened just before the hilly bit of the ride, so I got a bit of practice honking up them where I'd usually have sat and spun. Got to the garage, picked up the car and slung the bike inside.
This morning, when I put the bike on the stand, the cable had indeed pulled through the clamp on the RD by about half an inch or so. But strangely, there wasn't half an inch of slack, in fact hardly any.
I discovered to my alarm that the brifter had swallowed the slack in the cable and wasn't interested in giving it back. After taking the hood off, I could see a loop of cable but no sign of the nipple. Pulling through the free end of the cable and tugging on it didn't help, and it took about half a hour of manipulating the up and down levers before I could persuade the nipple to emerge from where it had been jammed in the mechanism. Even then it wasn't going to surrender until I put a pair of mole grips on it and managed ever so gently to pull the cable free.
Moral of the story: obviously do up the cable clamp on the derailleur properly and, if you don't and everything goes slack, don't under any circumstances waggle the shifter or it will eat the cable.
