No, not me and my delicate digits..But my lad!

His isla bike has 7 speed gripshift that he can change up the gears, but not back down!
Anything I can do to make the shift easier?
It’s a new bike, so hopefully will loosen up a tad…

Would most of the ‘resistance’ be in the tension spring, or cables??

Ta!

DrP

I found that they come smeared in grease – which actually slows/adds friction. Pull shifter apart and clean meticulously.
Cables also need to be uber clean as ever.
All ours when small struggled. The solution was always a new trigger shifter and mech. Shimano has a shorter reach of lever than SRAM, and old skool XT/XTR are light and short throw, especially combined with old skool good mech. Retrobike is your friend – and everyone is envious when your kids are riding on XT/XTR…! Our last shifters and mech were in mega good condition and @£40.

Yes. change the gear cable outer to brake outer.

Easiest way is to change to a underbar shifter that matches whichever S your rear mech is. Ive had this same problem with 2 of my kids so far

I put an old thumb shifter on Daniels early bikes easier for him to lever on. Is the Isla bike a 24 incher I have some tyres and tubes you can have if it is…

transporter13 – Member
Easiest way is to change to a underbar shifter that matches whichever S your rear mech is. Ive had this same problem with 2 of my kids so far

I spotted a rapid-fire 7spd shifter in the EBC sale for £5.74 if you decided to go that way.

GEARS, LEVERS & CONTROLS 69759 SRAM TRX TRIGGER SHIFTER R/H ONLY 7 SPEED £22.99 £5.74

http://ancillary.edinburghbicycle.com/comms/offloader/pdf/winter-sale-2014-accessories.pdf

Thanks – trigger shifter ordered!!
Will try the other ideas too..

If that fails, it’s a case of “MTFU boyo…!”

DrP

Best of ;luck with the trigger shifter as my kids still dont have the strength for them even when I tried them with XT
I was thinking of going back to grip shifter !!!

As above, clean them out. Light lube, not grease and clean cables. That made all the difference, and once they get used to shifting, they will get stronger and it won’t be a problem.

Tricky one with kids, if the gear cable run suffers from high friction (bends, draggy under BB routing etc.) then you can have just as many problems with triggers and thumbs not being strong enough.

Usual rules apply, keep lengths of external cable as short as possible to reduce friction while still having no sharp bends, use a decent quality outer, cut and file the ends flat before fitting, and open up the inner properly before fitting ferrules.

If you’re prepared to suffer the extra maintenance then removing the rubber grommets from inside the ferrules can reduce friction for very small hands, but you need to stay properly on top of things and be wary of wet rides, would only recommend that if they really struggle.

SRAM X7/X9 gripshift from the 9sp era normally has quite a light action, and subtle ‘adjustment’ of the spring in the shifter can reduce the force required to click from one notch to the next, just be careful to leave enough spring to hold it in gear.

My two lads had exactly the same problems with grip shifts when they were younger, and we also solved it with SRAM triggers 🙂

I had this a while ago… Lbs sorted me out with a 7speed shimano rf+ shifter seemed to work for the start of the rides then minivaders thumb seems to lose all power half way through. Much better than the grip shift tho

I’ll repeat this once moar for the hard of reading.

REPLACE THE GEAR OUTER CABLE WITH BRAKE CABLE OUTER.

This will reduce the friction in his cables massively.
if it is still too stiff after you’ve done this, check how stiff the mech spring is by hand (by pinching the cable bolt and adjuster barrel between thumb and forefinger) some mechs are way stiffer than others, some of the cheapest non-series shimano mechs have a much lighter action than XT/XTR.

this solution should cost you less than a tenner but of course YOU won’t have XTR kudos at the trail centre.

Not that you’d actually ever find an XT or XTR 7 speed shifter 😉

Mine have 9 speed [ not done for kudos but done so I can upgrade 😉 ] but I will try the cable suggestion and feedback.

Try bulking up the boy with a course of steroids.
Being a doctor you can write a hooky prescription and thus save on the costs vs replacing the shifters.

Buy him some Di2 you right fecker, Jesus!!

REPLACE THE GEAR OUTER CABLE WITH BRAKE CABLE OUTER.

This will reduce the friction in his cables massively

Only because brake by default has a larger ID than gear due to brake inners being thicker than gear, but oversized compression-less housing is available too.

Using brake outer for gears will introduce unwanted compression into the system unless the cable runs are already very very direct (which they wont be off the bars), in which case the gear casing would be fine anyway.

You can get away with it as a bodge if using friction shifters, and on 1:1 Sram kit to a degree, but indexed Shimano is a lot less tolerant of small variations in the cable tension.

Gear and brake housing are different for a reason!

Surely Di2 is the new must for children nowadays as it’s as simple as the touch of a button 😉
Shouldn’t all conscientious parents be upgrading to this for little Tarquin.

way to overthink it Wolfgang. 😉

And thanks for stating the obvious regarding the ID of (cheap and readily available) brake outer. 🙄

In the case of a 7speed kids bike any unwanted compression from using brake outer is irellevent as:
The only tension in the “system” is from a puny spring in the rear mech
Being a 7 speed system the outer doesn’t need to be completely compressionless for tolerances to be perfectly adequate to “index” perfectly. (Gear outer isn’t entirely compressionless either BTW)
Braking forces (far greater) don’t cause brake outer any major detrimental problems with outer cable compression.

Yes, it’s a bodge and I wouldn’t dream of suggesting otherwise. Many others here are suggesting “bodging” the use of XT or XTR shifters and mechs. Which I might point out (unless you have access to a time machine) will be indexed to 8 speed at best.
8 speed and 7 speed do not even share the same cassette sprocket spacing. 7 speed sprockets being 5mm apart, 8 speed being 4.8mm (that’s 1.2mm difference in indexing across the cassette). Yes, it’s do-able but not exactly ideal.

I normally stay away from here for a reason.

Di2 it is.

I ran a gripshift system years ago, and the thing I found was that normal oil-based grease would actually inhibit the smooth operation of it – something to do with the plastic used I think. You could buy gripshift specific ‘grease’ which I seem to recall was lanolin based. Application of this stuff made the grip system very smooth and easy to operate indeed.

It had nothing to do with the cable outer used; in fact I did use the ‘wrong’ cable outer with my 7-speed set up back in the day by accident. It took me weeks of fiddling about before I realised what I’d done, during which time I had bought a new shifter thinking that was the reason I couldn’t get it indexed!

Edit: here you go: https://www.sram.com/sram/mountain/products/jonnisnot-shifter-grease

a light coating of Vaseline would do a similar job of “greasing” the shifter internals. 😉

That’s “lubricating” for Wolfgang.

as a mech is just a spring wont any mech work with any other shifter – lets ignore the 1:1 of sram v Shimano here

Ie an 8 speed mech needs to have only 1.2 mm greater travel than a 7 speed mech and you could easily adjust for this with the adjuster screws.

Your comments about tension and lack of compression are not correct, at rest at the bottom of the cassette sure the only tension on the system is the mech spring, and that’s not great enough to cause any compression in the housing, but when you start adding shifting tension it will and does cause compression on the housing, especially on kids bikes where the cable runs are often at fairly acute angles due to small sizes.

Some kids simply don’t have the hand strength to use grip shift unless it’s set up with a very light and friction free action, but equally some don’t have the thumb strength for triggers/rapidfire either, sometimes a change in shifter type is the only option and if the OP is considering changing shifters then a change from 7 to 8 or 9 speed is also on the cards, albeit with reduced sprocket count if the freehub is only 7sp, depending on bike it obviously might be freewheel so that might be off the cards, but we don’t have that info to hand so people offering their advice about other shifters that have worked for their kids and customers is perfectly valid.

For all the hours I spend sorting crap shifting bodged kids and adult bikes I’m just passing on my experience, and in my experience using brake outer on an indexed gear system will introduce problems, you might be ok and get it shifting acceptably to begin with, but it wont be reliable and it wont stay that way.

So many kids bikes use cheaper parts with extra slop and crappy tolerances anyway that adding another one is not a great idea. A lot of the kids we deal with don’t even bother changing gear because they either can’t move the shifters, or the indexing is so crap that they cant deal with easing it in or over-shifting and backing off again. If it doesn’t work properly they just find a gear and leave it, and that’s when they start getting off and walking an not enjoying it.

I stand by my comments that using brake outer is not the best solution to this problem in any situation, as per my earlier comments reduce friction in the system at any point you can, use bigger ID gear outer if necessary instead of brake outer, and if sticking with the gripshift check if you need to adjust the shifter spring tension as well, on some it’s that harsh click that kids struggle with rather than friction in the cable.

I normally stay away from here for a reason.

please feel free to resume your normal behaviour 😉 <– see, a smiley, since you seem to think that makes everything OK, there’s no need to get all snarky about it.