Sun Race "Handy Shift" derailleurs - HOW [censored] ARE THEY?

Quoted message said:

their hard tension, or can there be some other reason for this? (My
friend has not had the bike for long, but tells me the grip shifters
were always difficult to shift).

no probs with my MGX D50 POS, but i dont shift the front cogs- just keep
it all the way high. 41 teeth... w00t.

On 4 Jul 2004 12:59:14 -0700, [email hidden] (Bob Ladbury)

Quoted message said:

My question is, if anyone
has these gears or has used them, can you confirm my conclusion about
their hard tension, or can there be some other reason for this? (My
friend has not had the bike for long, but tells me the grip shifters
were always difficult to shift).

Have you tried moving the front derailleur up or down? Sometimes the
vertical positioning can create this kind of difficulty. Maybe start
with it so that the derailleur cage just clears the large ring as it
travels out (1 mm or so) and then raise it by 2 mm a couple of times
to see if it gets better or worse.

I don't know anything about the Sun Race shifters per se.

On 4 Jul 2004 12:59:14 -0700, [email hidden] (Bob Ladbury)

Quoted message said:

The biggest problem with the front derailleur is
you have to apply so much hand pressure to get the chain to go on the
largest sprocket, that I now have blisters all over my hands from
adjusting these derailleurs.

Replace the cable and housing. The symptoms you describe are entirely
consistent with a cable and/or housing that's corroded or contaminated
with crud. It may seem to move freely when you test it even though
it's wasted inside; when hard shift operation is present, the first
step after lubricating the der is replacing the cable...and at least
nine times out of ten, lube won't fix a hard shift.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Surrealism is a pectinated ranzel.

I will make the rash assumption that you've already investigated the
travel stop adjustments on the der to confirm that the unit isn't
running up against them before the shift is completed...
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Surrealism is a pectinated ranzel.

Dan Daniel <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

On 4 Jul 2004 12:59:14 -0700, [email hidden] (Bob Ladbury)

Quoted message said:

My question is, if anyone
has these gears or has used them, can you confirm my conclusion about
their hard tension, or can there be some other reason for this? (My
friend has not had the bike for long, but tells me the grip shifters
were always difficult to shift).

Have you tried moving the front derailleur up or down? Sometimes the
vertical positioning can create this kind of difficulty. Maybe start
with it so that the derailleur cage just clears the large ring as it
travels out (1 mm or so) and then raise it by 2 mm a couple of times
to see if it gets better or worse.

I don't know anything about the Sun Race shifters per se.

Thanks for letting me know. Yes, I have tried moving the position of
the derailleur up and down on the seat tube. In fact, the only way I
could get the chain to work properly on all 3 sprockets was to
position the derailleur cage very close to the large ring. (Moving it
further away from the large sprocket makes it SO hard to shift up to
the largest ring, that I have to use all the force I have in my other
hand to accomplish the shift!). It's so close, that the chain
occasionally gets caught between the derailleur cage and the bottom
bracket bar, during speed changes. I have also tried to lubricate the
cable - it slides pretty easily in and out of the housing, on its own.
So I'm not sure replacing the cable or housing is the solution to the
problem, but then it might just be.

But if someone doesn't actually know the Sun Race Handy [censored]
derailleurs first hand, its hard to know whether these cheap
grip-shifters are inherently hard to use - no matter what you try to
do (which could be, say, due to the spring on the front derailleur
cage having more tension than most). After all, I read a reference on
usenet to a professional review of these shifters on a mountain bike,
and the reviewer complained about how hard they were to shift.

On 4 Jul 2004 20:06:00 -0700, [email hidden] (Bob Ladbury)

Quoted message said:

But if someone doesn't actually know the Sun Race Handy [censored]
derailleurs first hand, its hard to know whether these cheap
grip-shifters are inherently hard to use - no matter what you try to
do (which could be, say, due to the spring on the front derailleur
cage having more tension than most). After all, I read a reference on
usenet to a professional review of these shifters on a mountain bike,
and the reviewer complained about how hard they were to shift.

There's a possibility that these may be as nasty as the crappy ones on
the Roadmaster Mt Storm; the shifters on that one are SRAM, but I
can't recall whether the front der even had a name on it. On those,
yes, the front often shifts hard when first received, but by adjusting
the front der's stop at the big-sprocket end to allow a slight
overshift and setting the shifter cable adjustment so that this
position is reached just *past* the last click, with the fallback into
the ratchet stop being dead on, I've made one possible to use without
risk of blistering. Replacing the cable later with one that was
slipperier improved the shifting quite a bit, though. Some of the
cheap-bike cables are, for lack of a more polite description, suitable
only for use as fertilizer after a period of composting.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Surrealism is a pectinated ranzel.

Bob Ladbury said:

I've been working on the derailleurs of a friend's bike, and I find
the whole thing to be quite torturous. They are Sun-Race "Handy [censored]"
derailleurs. I am close to snapping the cable from being frayed after
so many adjustments, and I still am not able to adjust the front
derailleurs to get the chain to fall on the lower sprocket AND at the
same time, raise itself up on the largest, and have the whole process
go smoothly without chains getting caught in the derailleur cage on
frequent occasions. The biggest problem with the front derailleur is
you have to apply so much hand pressure to get the chain to go on the
largest sprocket, that I now have blisters all over my hands from
adjusting these derailleurs. I have a similar looking system on my
Mongoose (Grip Shift), but NO WAY do they require so much hand tension
to change gears. (and no, I can not make the cables more slack on the
front Sun Race derailleur to ease shifting, else that causes problems
shifting gears).

After days of adjustments, I have no choice but to conclude that the
Handy Shift are inherently difficult to shift in the lowest(?) gears
(chain on largest sprocket), even right off the factory line. I don't
come to this conclusion hastily. The cables (were) in exc. condition,
so I don't think that's the problem. There's a red tension adjustment
ring, which goes from Soft to Hard, but you already get blisters on
"Soft" and Hard makes the nightmare of riding as bike with the Sun
Race Handy Shift grip shifters even worse. My question is, if anyone
has these gears or has used them, can you confirm my conclusion about
their hard tension, or can there be some other reason for this? (My
friend has not had the bike for long, but tells me the grip shifters
were always difficult to shift).

Remove the wires, ensure the cable casing ends are trimmed
cleanly and reinstall the gear wires. You might just get a
couple if they are frayed already. As you feed the wire
through casing, wipe machine oil on it. If the wire runs
over a metal or nylon plate, lube that too.

Are you on the proper side of the anchor bolt? The wire
should be on the edge closest to the bike on a SunRace
front. Attaching the wire on the far side will make shifting
very difficult as you reduce the leverage.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Quoted message said:

Replace the cable and housing.

Going along with this, if there are kinks of ANY kind in the housing, you
will have difficulty shifting.

I would recommend dousing the derailleur and the innards of the shifter with
WD40 or similar, let it soak for a while, then trying new cables and
housing. Sometimes the FD (which doesn't have bearings or bushings to
speak of) gets its galvanized plates corrosively welded to itself and
freezes up operation. This is most often seen on bikes left outside in the
rain and bikes that are ridden near salt water, like at the beach.

Unless the spring's shot in the FD, chances are that you'll be able to get
it working well without blistering yourself.

FYI, cheap FDs of decent quality can be had at most bike shops for $15 or
less.

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training