Makes sense. Ta.

As said above. Limit screws spot on and everything clean. Lube the cables with very thin oil.

The biggest revelation for me was hanger alignment. It might look straight but it won’t be. That can be the difference between sharp, crisp shifts every time or not.

I invested in a Park DAG and check the alignment on every good clean of the bike. If you’re taking the chain off it’s only one bolt to take the rear mech off. Just make sure you have a spare mech hanger in the tool box. Sometimes the hanger can be so far out it’s not saveable.

Friction shifting all the way.

I use bar-end shifters on most of my geared bikes, so it’s straight forward, but my Swift is likely to get it’s 3×10 XT set-up moved to a bar-end & ‘thumbie’ mount arrangement pretty soon too.

Less noise, no mis-shifts, huge span in one movement, reliable, shifts anything over anything … what’s not to like?

This

JonEdwards – Member
If you’re running 9 speed, then SRAM XO.

Just. Works.

Best shifting I’ve ever had, works under all conditions, minimal maintenance, just perfect 😀

Internal hub gears

full outers. Slick shifting for years.

Electric

i rub mine in shit and grit bung it in the shed for a week then spray gt85 all over the disc rotors just befpre heading out.

mixed results so far

Rohloff. 😉

On derailleur gears, I found middleburn cable pulses + full length outerw to be the big thing. Replacing worn jockey wheels can also improve things a lot.

I grind the outer cable ends so they are completely square and fit into the ferules can help,One other thing thats overlooked is the cassette or chain set sprockets not positioned properly on the free hub carrier or crank-set causing the ramps to be in the wrong place hth

Wow..some folk go to a lot of effort here!

I just use full shimano outers and 1.1mm inners. Combined with knowing how to set up my gears this gives me perfect shifting for months with minor barrel adjustment.

middleburn cable pulses

Gah! That should have been “cable oilers”‘ obviously. Damned auto-correct! 😕

andyv – Member
Go singlespeed…

ottocat – Member
Internal hub gears

PhilO – Member
Rohloff.

+1 🙂

Limit screws do nothing for general indexing. They can only affect gear changes into the highest and lowest gears but if they are set too wide they won’t even do that. In decending order of importance the things that improve shifting are

1. A clean, well lubricated, unworn drivetrain
2. Clean, well lubricated cables (personally I use XTR)
3. Frame/hanger alignment
4. Quality of mech and shifters.

Sounds like a pretty good summary to me gonefishin, thanks.

My shifting has been so-so since fitting a Trex. I bent my hanger the other night, put a new one on and shifting is loads better, so it seems my hanger has been invisibly bent for a while from some crash or other.