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
[url= http://www.vitalmtb.com/features/How-To-Connect-Your-Dropper-Post-to-Shimano-or-SRAM-Front-Shifter,839 ]Here you go[/url]
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. ๐ฟ
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 ๐ณ
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.
Ah right, I knew he'd used a grip shift for something, lol.
Might try that on my jekyll.













