Has anyone converted their front shifter to a dropper remote and could tell me what I need to do ?
I’ll be using a shimano shifter if that makes any difference.

Thanks

Here you go

Thanks for that , just what I needed .

Sort of tried it myself on a knackered 10speed XT shifter to put on the singlespeed but it turns out it was so knackered it wouldn’t work as as dropper remote. 👿
Wasn’t too hard if you following the instructions in the link, be careful with the very small circlip as it could be easy to lose 😳

Thanks for the heads up , I’ll give it a try tomorrow

Thanks for the prompt OP, I have meant to have a crack at this bodge for months, using an old LX shifter in the garage.

I finally Cracked it open and got a bit Dremel happy this evening, just installed it on the bike and it’s about 200% better than the crankbros lever it replaced in terms of smoothness and mechanical advantage, It’s operating an old X fusion HiLo.

I took pictures as I went, I might pop them up tomorrow…

Nice one cookeaa, pics would be helpful.

Thanks

Right then, here it is in all its glory:

Shimano SL-M580 LH shifter, sans indicator window, I bought it used 9~10 years ago for a build, so it’s probably 12-15 years old (guess)…

Undid the three screws on the underside and the whole thing opens up nice and easy:

Next locate the pawl mechanism to retain/release the cable for each shift, it’s just above my thumb in this picture:

My original plan was to grind the head off the pin the pawls pivot on to pull that apart and extract the pawls, but having ground the head off I found the pin was very securely pressed into the top plate:

Instead I attacked the pawls directly, I was able to grind the head off the spring that operates the cable retention mechanism shown here:

Once the spring was gone the pawl ceased to operate and the shifter was now simply pulling and returning as desired.

For good measure (and I didn’t get a decent picture of this) I flipped the pawl round and ground off its face/tooth profile so the ratcheting mechanism could never catch on it again.

I spent a good few minutes trying to get the lever to catch working it back/fourth and seeing if the pawls could be persuaded to cause a problem.

Once satisfied that was working, I used a slitting disc to take the release lever arm off and ground the stub back to a nice smooth(ish) finish:

I blew the whole thing out with compressed air, and stuffed it full of marine grease, more to keep the moisture out than lubricate anything:

Reassembled it and weighed it along with the CB lever it’s replacing:

And fitted:

Works much better, and I think I can live with the 75g weight penalty….

Dead simple really if you have a Dremel and an all but worthless old shifter… Don’t think I’d want to attack a nice shiny XT like this TBH…

I did also start wondering if you could do something similar with a Gripshifter, twisting LH back to drop might work quite well…

Did mine this afternoon , works great and a really light action , very pleased with it. I think Jerome clementz has used a grip shifter for this in the past.

Just looked it up, turns out (2013/14 at least) Clementz was using the Gripshift to change travel modes on his jekyll’s rear shock, with a regular reverb remote just inboard:

Ah right, I knew he’d used a grip shift for something, lol.
Might try that on my jekyll.