Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Score One for the Consumer

After the crit on Saturday, James complained that his left shifter wouldn't work. Sure enough the shifter just wouldn't pull the cable far enough to get the the chain up on the big ring. I proclaimed the shifter "broken" and resolved to find him a new one on Ebay.

After reading some internet posts I decided to see if I could salvage this thing. They are hard to get at and look like a transmission inside. Nothing I did made a difference. I went to my LBS and they didn't have a shifter in stock. I called another shop and they had a new one that just came off a bike and he was willing to make a deal on it. Probably could have landed it for around $120. That seemed pretty good but I decideded to keep pushing. The next shop started asking me questions about the shifter and the bike which puzzled me. As it turns out Shimano tried to save money by building a common shifter for double and triple chain ring setups. You can tell if you have one of these because the shifter doesn't have "Double" written on it. Shimano has had so many problems with this that they are warranty replacing them sight unseen and this shop owner got this important info to me and saved me $120!

The shop: Global Bikes
The owner: Scott
The City: Gilbert, AZ

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