I am confused, what I thought was a simple job has turn into a mare

Decided to swap from 2 to 3 rings up front, bare in mind when reading this the bike was setup and working perfectly shifting from the inner to middle ring.

I installed a new chain

Set the lower stop with the chain on the inner ring and largest cog, chain just touching then backed off

Clamped the cable, once the cable is clamped the shifter is hard to shift and doesn’t engage properly. Also the lever doesn’t return, I assumed the spring had gone.

Loosened the cable and checked the shifter which shifts freely and the lever returns.

After further messing over the week, I have managed to get it to run on the inner and outer rings. That is when I push the lever its still stiff, the chain completely misses the middle ring straight to the outer and the lever still doesn’t return properly, I went round the block and it seems stable.

I am at a loss why its pulling so much cable, why its so stiff and why it should change so dramatically

Please help, its doing my nut

Cheers

Okay, obvious front mech question – how have you clamped the cable? ‘cos it’s meant to go over the knobble, not under.

That’s a very common mistake…

Its a dual pull slx, clamped it the same way as it was before

I had something very similar when I updated from a bottom pull deore to a Dual Pull XT, I had routed the cable wrongly and it was actually trying to pull the mech the wrong way (D’OH).

It was only when I had a play and sussed which way the lever on the mech worked that I sussed out what was wrong.

I managed to mis-thread the cable through the trigger shifter on a sram x-9, which caused shifting wierdness and was a complete pain to fix(it involved taking the shifter apart, schpling!)

Either incorrect cable routing..or.. Check where the cable is clamped to the mech, if the little metal bit under the cable clamping bolt isn’t the right way round the little tab on it can catch on the seat tube stopping the mech moving freely

Actually I remember on mine putting the cable clamp together slightly wrong too which was catching on part of the mechanism, could this be an issue?

Cheers for the input guys

Sobriety – Shifters are X7’s so that’s one to check