DX 7-speed MTB thumbshifters

in message <40dee20e.0@entanet>, Zog The Undeniable

(') said:

Anyone ever taken the indexed one apart? Mine was getting
sticky and gear changing was atrocious, so I've
disassembled it (if you do this there's a sneaky left
hand thread on the main nut holding everything together),
cleaned all the parts, which aren't worn, and reassembled
in the exact reverse order. Needless to say something is
not right and the shift lever hardly moves, although the
friction/SIS lever works OK. I'm thinking there must be a
knack to getting the shift lever in the right position
relative to the baseplate against the force of the
spring, before putting the two little steel balls in - a
bit like turning a rear mech pivot bolt before putting
the circlip on.

SRAM gripshifts (at least the lower models) are quite cheap
and _vastly_ better. Today I did my first reasonably long
trip on my Mantra, which has Shimano XT mechs but came with
no shifters so I experimentally fitted fifteen quid SRAM
ones because I wanted to try something different, and I'm
hugely impressed. Shifting is almost gestural, you can
change as many cogs at the back as you want in one go, and
you can _trim_ _the_ _front_, which is a thing which has
always annoyed me about 'rapidfire'.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke)
jasmine.org.uk~simonOpen ↗

Due to financial constraints, the light at the end
of the tunnel has been switched off.

Simon Brooke [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

SRAM gripshifts (at least the lower models) are quite
cheap and _vastly_ better.

The cheapness comes with a price. The mechanism for
holding the rotating column into the base is a small
plastic tag. After 1 week on the bent, this snapped.
Please note that there is no force on the handlebars at
all. I agree that the shifting is good, but I don't expect
to have to replace shifters on a weekly basis. My bar-end
levers are now on order!

Jon