The Insanity Continues: shifter improvements.
I had formed four different spring steel leaves for my shifter, before I got one successfully bent, which worked and simply did not break while I was forming it.
It was far from ideal, but it provided adequate tension, and with the nearly unlimited leverage of that stick shifter I didn’t have a problem positioning the shifter.
But the spring was chewing up the aluminum. It wasn’t well formed. I hadn’t stripped the paint and polished it. It was just ugly and awkward too.
I had to do it over. I mean look at this mess with that stupid clamp on the handle bar to make it work. I stole it out of my old Shimano shifter.
The spring before:
I had no more of that wire, so I had to reform it. Fortunately it worked. It’s not perfect, but it is all buffed out now.
The spring after:
Next, I drilled out that little sprue mark next to the bolt, and put in a small bolt all the way through the base.
I tapped it in and I also put another hidden nut inside the base. Those two nuts keep everything together. See the spacers?
The smaller bolt will now carry the spring, and it will cantilever over the larger bolt and be aligned by it.
It’s capped off with this paisley shaped washer that I created. It retains the spring.
You can see this now eliminates the little clamp on the handlebar.
I put two layers of heat shrink tubing on the spring so that it wouldn’t gall the aluminum.
It feels much smoother in operation and there is still enough tension to keep the stick in place. Maybe. I haven’t ridden it yet today.
