SRAM Apex Left Shifter (Front) - Not working

[Dzzi]

Hi

The above is on my 2011 Secteur Elite its done about 9000km's and to be honest it's not been working well for a while but ive been living with it. I managed to get it working reasonably well, as in you could gently coax it from big to small and back, you have/had to push quite a long way over to get it into the Big ring.

Took it to me LBS the other day, and they've "adjusted it", i tested it once on Saturday and it worked up and back, Sunday i did the L'Etape from the Velodrome and it didnt work at all i manually moved it into the big ring and thankfully it was flat enough not to need the small one.

Rode today and the lever now just flaps around doing nothing.

I've not had time to take a look at it but i think i might need a new Left shifter, just curious to see if anyone has any experience or advice on this.

Thanks
Dave

 

[raleighnut]

Sounds more like it needs a new cable.

 

[Dzzi]

I've just spent 10 mins having a little play around, pulled the hood cover back and the end of the cable the bit with the nipple or whatever one calls it was kind of not seated correctly....so by pushing the lever the wrong way to the outside of the bike 3-4mm it seated itself again...and then it worked rolled the cover back and its seems to work but you have to push it to the outside each time... So does that sound like cable maybe...

Slightly silly question but how do you get the whole shifter off the handle bars assume its the bolt in the area you rest your hands on that needs to be loosened to free the circle clip that i assume holds the whole thing to the bars...quite a lot of assumption going on here sorry !

 

[Hacienda71]

There is an alan key bolt underneath the hood that loosens the clamp. If your cable has snapped and they do sometimes then the paddle will go flappy. Easy way to check is give the front mech cable a good yank where it should be under tension and see if the inner cable starts to come out. If the cable has snapped you would tend to default to the small ring as this is where the front mech spring will bring the front mech back to if there is no tension.

 

[Smokin Joe]

I've just spent 10 mins having a little play around, pulled the hood cover back and the end of the cable the bit with the nipple or whatever one calls it was kind of not seated correctly....so by pushing the lever the wrong way to the outside of the bike 3-4mm it seated itself again...and then it worked rolled the cover back and its seems to work but you have to push it to the outside each time... So does that sound like cable maybe...

Slightly silly question but how do you get the whole shifter off the handle bars assume its the bolt in the area you rest your hands on that needs to be loosened to free the circle clip that i assume holds the whole thing to the bars...quite a lot of assumption going on here sorry !

The cable won't stay seated unless you undid the clamp on the mech afterwards and pulled it tight.

 

[Dzzi]

Ahh ok thanks to both for the guidance makes sense, now i just need to finish some work and nip back out to the garage

 

[raleighnut]

I've just spent 10 mins having a little play around, pulled the hood cover back and the end of the cable the bit with the nipple or whatever one calls it was kind of not seated correctly....so by pushing the lever the wrong way to the outside of the bike 3-4mm it seated itself again...and then it worked rolled the cover back and its seems to work but you have to push it to the outside each time... So does that sound like cable maybe...

Slightly silly question but how do you get the whole shifter off the handle bars assume its the bolt in the area you rest your hands on that needs to be loosened to free the circle clip that i assume holds the whole thing to the bars...quite a lot of assumption going on here sorry !

You don't need to remove the lever to replace the inner cable.

 

[Dzzi]

Thanks for confirming, I'm just considering taking it off to give it a really good clean, lube. Can you get the side plates off without totally removing from the bars do you know ?