Skipping gears

MrChrisP

I've got an 09 Stinky Six which I've had since April. Having moved to Leeds from Edinburgh recently I haven't had much chance to ride it as much as I'd like, but when out today I found the gears were skipping pretty badly on both uphill and along flat roads and paths. Downhill sections were fine but then again I wasn't really changing gears much if at all...

when I took the bike out the first few times it was absolutely perfect and had no problems whatsoever.

Since then it has been sat in a room for a couple months gathering dust and today on my ride I found the gears skipping pretty badly regardless of the terrain I was on. The problem wasn't centred around any specific gears either, it seemed to be all of them although it was worst when I was using the lower of the two front cogs.

Is this just a symptom of the bike not being used much in a while or do all new bikes suffer from this in the first few months?

I'm not very clued up on gear maintenance so am considering taking it to a shop to have the gears indexed again but thought I'd check on here first and see if anyone can provide some tips. I want to learn how to maintain the bike myself at least to a reasonable standard so any info you can provide would be hugely appreciated.

Cheers,
Chris

nicklouse

mucky or stretched cables.

read the how to set your gears on Parktools.

it will just be s tension issue unless it is mucky cables which could be then effected by the suspension movement.

MrChrisP

Cheers dude. It might be streched cables. Didn't think of that. I'm guessing because they're new cables they will stretch a bit until have been used for a while?

Definitely not mucky cables. Have always made sure all moving parts at least are clean after a ride plus today was the first time I've taken the bike out after it's been raining so it's not had a chance to build up any mud until now.

Will check parktools and see what I can come up with.