Friday when I was out riding my bicycle I had to shift when going uphill. The shift lever broke! That has never happened to me in all these decades of riding my bicycles. The lever was for the rear derailleur. The derailleur moved to the lowest cog on the freewheel. The hardest gear. As most of my ride home was flat and not downhill I needed the chain to be on an easier cog to ride. I hand positioned the chain and derailleur and then wrapped the shifter cable around my water bottle cage. It held and I was able to ride home.
Sunday I "fixed" the problem. Kind-of fixed. The shift lever is mounted in the bicycle frame. It was not mounted on a band that goes around the frame. The shift levers I have in my extra parts odds-and-ends box are mounted on a band. But the band is for old steel framed bicycles where the frame tube is smaller in size. The band would not reach around my bicycle's frame.
To make things work I moved the cable over to the other shifter as that still worked. I wasn't using that shifter as I never got around to replacing the front derailleur as I never need to use that one. Now my rear derailleur works. On my to-do list is to see how I can replace/fix the broken shift lever.
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| Messed up bicycle |
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| Broken shift lever |
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| How I wrapped the broken lever and cable around the water bottle cage. |
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| The rear derailleur |
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| How the shift lever is attached to the bicycle. |
Since the day was nice - temperature of 63 F and sun - I did more work on my bicycle. The chain and freewheel is wearing out. I've babied it along since early February as I didn't want to put a new chain and freewheel on the bicycle when it was still cold and there was snow and muck on the roads. So I replaced them this afternoon.
I also noticed the two hard plastic cogs on the rear derailleur had worn their "teeth" down. So I found an old rear derailleur in my odds-and-ends box and took its cogs and put it on my bicycle's rear derailleur.
Now my bicycle rides better and tighter.
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