Why do SRAM make their components out of cheese?

I’ve already had to cobble together a super slack X9 mech and a smashed X0 mech: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/x9-x0-frankenmech

Anyway, my Rival shifter did the same thing that every other Rival (road) shifter seems to have done:

Like This One

And This One…

Since there is no chance I’m going to buy another (SRAM product with moving parts that is), I decided to fix it with the help of a disc brake adaptor:

As the ‘shifter return’ spring won’t fit in anymore, a strong elastic band seems to do the job and looks great.

Seems to be holding up to a few shifts in the kitchen… spin tomorrow will confirm..

Good skills.

Nice work. I had to do the rubber band trick on a Campag 11 speed shifter, the spring broke and is only available as part of the shifter assy (ie everything except the lever and hood), 90€ 🙄

Nice one. Managed to break my sram x5 shifter in half unloading at dalby today. Got a friends fork caught in the cable ofmine and only a slight tug bust it. So a bodge tape wrapping and putting up with crap shifting was in order. Build quality aint great

liking your work here 😉

Good work.

I’ve been a big Sram fan for a long time but I’m starting to loose patience with their shifters which appear to be made of cheese these days. My X9 shifters keep dying; the lower leaver shifts fine but doesn’t return. Their older stuff was great though. I still have a couple of sets of the early trigger shifters from 05 and they still work. The nine speed stuff on my BFe us great.

If another shifter dies, I’ll be buying a Saint shifter and a Zee mech.

I’ve had this with my RH Rival shifter, SRAM replaced it as it is a known fault.

They really should be sorting the problem though as they are stupdly expensive.

Had exactly the same bit break on mine. Ended up getting a replacement red shifter from merlin for much less than the cost of a replacement set of rival ones. The internals are much sturdier than the rival shifter.

Yeah I noticed with my new Van Nich road bike, the SRAM apex levers were shockingly flexible enough not to shift properly.
And enough to snap eek!

Well the elastic band lasted about ten minutes..

Evo edition featuring the ‘pro spring’

Finished with ‘stealth’ permanent marker

halfords sent one back to sram for me .had to prove i’d bought the bike there.
replaced with new front and rear.

Sadly this is a couple (maybe 3) years old and I bought it off a mate… not sure I could send it back in its current state!

would have to prove you bought it new .hav’nt your mate got a recipt .
the one’s i sent back were 3 years and about 12k old told halfords 3k max though.

That’s ‘mates’ for you, eh? 😉

Nice bodging though. Could you make a leaf style spring work?

Think this was a known issue with the early SRAM Rival lever.
Had a warranty replacement for F+R myself on a set which were well over two years old.
Subsequent versions have supposedly fixed it.