Friday 20 August 2010

Nexus 8 Shifter (part 3)

I've been having a bit of an issue with the Nexus 8 shifter. Basically it shifts in a different direction to the one I'm used to. The gripshift on my Trek is twist backwards to go down gears and twist upwards to go up gears. I think this is the same on all gripshift systems, but I might be wrong. But for some reason the shifter for the Nexus system goes in the opposite direction. It shifts in the same way as a motorbike accelerator, you twist backwards for faster.



This is fine if your only gripshift is the Nexus, but I use both bikes and its really confusing to ride the Nexus then get on the Trek and start changing down gears when I meant to change up and vice versa.



So the only easy solution I could see was to swap the Nexus shifter from the right hand side of the bars to the left. This would mean the number dial would be upside down, but I can live with that if it saves me from getting the gears all wrong when I'm in the middle of traffic.

The shifter is also a bit of a handlebar hog and had meant my brake levers were not symmetrical, so whilst I was at it I decided to solve this by chopping a bit off one of the grips.

I made sure I had enough of the grip leftover to accomodate the width of my hand, since the shifter wouldn't be comfortable to use as part of the grip for long trips.


I'm toying with the idea of some swept back handlebars on this bike, so this might all get redone at some point anyway.

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