Now I just can't seem to do it, had Shimano for years and this is my first foray into SRAM but whereas I've got the rear sweet as. The front just doesn't want to work well!

It's a SRAM x7, is there an voodo blck magic tips for this?

buy a shimano xt front mech and shifters!

bin the rest!

I had some bother with a sram x5 front mech a while back. I had to leave quite a lot of slack on the cable with the shifter and mech in the granny ring position to avoid it going straight from granny ring to outer ring. This was the only way I managed to get it working on all three rings.

Don't know if it's peculiar to certain frame/mech combos.

Think this is the way to go, either that or move the crank out more to the outside with some spacers on the BB shell