Gear Shifting

Brother_Dennis

Ok this is probably a stupid question. I have recently bought a new Planet X RT 58 and the last time I changed gear on a road bike it was a raleigh team replica.

So I thought this will be no problem gears are gears the levers are just in a different place.

My problem is Shifting Up to a high gear when pushing the shift should it be a tap, or a push all across its plane of movement ? and if so in doing this should I be able to shift one gear at a time? Down shifting is very precise and controlled exactly as I expected with Tiagra. Sometimes I find myself upshifting then clicking back down one gear as I have shifted up more than one cog.

Am I the problem or are the gears slightly out

Thanks for any help

Ted

crescent

With Shimano a shift to an 'easier' gear is achieved by pushing the right brake lever to the left. It is possible (and in some cases desirable) to move more than one gear with one push of the lever, depending how far you push it. It takes a bit of practice to move it just the right distance to move up only one gear. Using the small trigger to move the gears in the other direction is much more of a precise movement, one click = one gear. Pushing the brake lever puts more tension on the cable proportional to the size of the movement and it is held in position by a ratchet mechanism, using the small trigger relaxes the tension by a finite amount.

cattytown

I often find the terms up and down confusing when talking about bike gears - different people seem to use them opposite ways.

The way I work logically is you have two levers on shimano shifters. A big one (brake) and a little one. On both on my bike the little one moves to a physically smaller gear - inner ring at the front, smaller sprocket at the back.

Using the small shifter for the rear gears just does one gear at a time. The big lever will shift multiple. Push one clikc - one gear - two clicks two gears.

Paul.

Brother_Dennis

Thanks for that I think you've answered my question i probably need to get the feel for the upshifting better.

Initialised

The biggest sprocket is the lowest gear, the smallest sprocket is the highest gear.

Shifting up means moving the chain to a smaller sprocket.

To up shift one gear press the small lever. One press = one gear.

To down shift use the big lever a small push changes one gear, a big push changes two gears.