1.1 or 1.2 mm gear inners

wishitwasallflat

SRAM say they are optimised for 1.1mm inners - quite a few lbs that I tried said they fit 1.2mm to everything - some had both sizes. Seems clear SRAM shifters will work with 1.2mm but while 0.1mm is a small distance in absolute terms but I make it a 9.09% increase over 1.1mm which seems a lot.

Anyway I re-cabled with 1.1mm (cause I'm anal about this kind of thing) anyone else have any thoughts (or is this too boring ...) - I'm curious about these things

rake

any improvement? my sram front shift can get rather stiff , bb guide i think puts a sharp bend in the cable before it goes through the frame. im not sure what cables they are.

chrisw12

Before I moved over to SRAM I did a bit of research into how easy the system was to re cable and I read somewhere that people we're having problems threading the 1.2 cable into the shifters. Also, one thing I notice with my SRAM set up is that it's very sensitive to cable drag, so much so that that extra .1mm could effect shifting performance.

wishitwasallflat

rake wrote:

any improvement? my sram front shift can get rather stiff , bb guide i think puts a sharp bend in the cable before it goes through the frame. im not sure what cables they are.

Hard to say as I recabled to try to sort a rear deraileur issue which I had had for a few weeks and am still tweaking it. The difficulty is I set it on the turbo and it seems fine but then 10-20 miles or so into a ride it has needed tweaking and I have only managed 50 or so miles since I did it due to work, kids etc ! :x I am now wondering if it may have actually been chain stretch so I am going to refit old chain and see if I can get the tension right. In short I will post an answer once I sort out what the F88$ is actually going on!

For what its worth the 1.1 mm is definetely not worse and the front does seem crisper but in my experience the absolute key thing there seems to be to have really high tension on the wire, even when in the small ring, and keep it high.

rake

ive managed to make a few adjustments. the front mech seemed very stiffly sprung in comparison to other makes and i was never happy with the force needed on the shift paddle. ive lowered the spring tension by a fair amount and it seems much more snappy and faster changing up and doesnt make nearly as loud a cracking sound. it still changes down to small properly as well but i do have to ease of the cranks for 0.05 seconds, so no difference from before then.

wishitwasallflat

rake wrote:

ive managed to make a few adjustments. the front mech seemed very stiffly sprung in comparison to other makes and i was never happy with the force needed on the shift paddle. ive lowered the spring tension by a fair amount and it seems much more snappy and faster changing up and doesnt make nearly as loud a cracking sound. it still changes down to small properly as well but i do have to ease of the cranks for 0.05 seconds, so no difference from before then.

How did you lower the spring tension? Mine works ok (just ok though ) but I feel exactly the same as you describe - needs way too much force to shift and makes way too much noise. It is better if cable tension is really high but reducing the spring tension sounds way better solution. Is there a site that would show me how or would you describe how to do it please?

rake

im not aware of anyone else whos done this. i even considered heating the spring to soften it but decided it was too uncontrollable and would damage the finish. it took the mech off and looked at how the spring is mounted. mines a rival mech so dont know if the others are the same, but could quite easily be so. looking from the rear of the cage you should see that one of the spring tabs stops against a sticking out black tab. it is possible with a pair of pliers to release the spring to the side of the tab. then it becomes free to rotate a little. i then used the pliers to bend the other tab at the other end of the spring flatter so it sits further round against the cage. its then just a matter of prizing the other end around the black tab again as it was to start with. it takes carefull bending of the spring as it would be hard to undo if you went too far. i just did it a bit at a time untill i was happy. i will try and take some photos to explain better. it really is quite simple and quick to do though and looks exactly the same when done and will be 100% as reliable. the nice thing is that the lower tension also reduces the drag on the bb guide consiberably.
i would be prepared to do it for you at no cost if you could pay postage.

wishitwasallflat

Brilliant Rake thanks a million - I will have a look at mine (mine is APEX but I think the basic construction is the same on the whole range just materials change) and see if I think it's do-able. If not I may take you up on your offer and will PM you if I do.

rake

ok. the trickey bit is the actual bending of the spring stop as the is very little room. its hard to describe but i used quite an unusual squashing movement with the pliers which required good dexterity with the pliers.