On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 20:37 -0700, Jim Cloud wrote: > When you're shifting while climbing you really need to anticipate a > shift and begin changing gears before the grade of the hill becomes > steeper. If you're trying to shift with any substantial pressure on > the pedals there's too much tension on the chain to allow the > derailleur to move the chain up on the cogs. If you've gotten into > the grade and cannot easily shift it's better to dismount and spin the > pedals as you lift the rear wheel and move the shifter lever to get > into a gear you can maintain on the grade. Keep practicing, it will > become second nature to anticipate a gear change in advance of the > increasing grade of a hill.
It's curious, but using the original SunTour Sprint downtube levers as bar end shifters, working 7 speed Hyperglide, I find rear shifting to be substantially more accurate and positive if I shift with pressure on the pedals than if I relieve the pressure entirely. This is quite the opposite of what used to be the case back in the day of 5 and 6 speed "straight cut" freewheels, which often balked at downshifting under load. No load results in an inaccurate shift with some noise, while shifting with a load results in a "KLUNK" and a perfectly accurate shift. But even back then, we learned a technique for finessing a shift on a hill, putting in extra effort to gain some momentum, then reducing the pressure and shifting "in the lull". This became second nature, and many of us continue to do it even when shifting index shifters and Hyperglide. It's much better, in my opinion, to learn techniques like these than to drop into an unnecessarily low gear at the sight of a hill, as so many used to do back in the day. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
