I found some used silver shifters along my route, I believe in Bike Newport. A pretty sweet Bike shop on the Oregon coast and pretty much a “Must Visit” spot for touring cyclists on the Coast. Of course the fellers were sweet and after mussing around, I found that they had a pair of used Silver Shifters. I got a good deal on them and since the plastic bits on my Shimano Shifters were disintegrating, I figured it might be a viable replacement.

Changing the shifters was a piece of cake and I really enjoyed the ratchet mechanism and ‘feel’ of the shifters. I suppose the longer levers were probably the biggest draw, making shifting very gentle. However, after a year or so on the road, there were a few issues and I had hard time finding materials online for disassembly (actually a piece of cake). There was a particularly sticky (pun intended) issue when the cable head got stuck in the housing the the gear cable got frayed. I couldn’t get it out, I replaced them with the disintegrating Shimano shifters, I managed to ride for 3 or so months on them. Eventually, I found a really friendly workshop in Tumbaco, Ecuador, who helped to drill thro the Cable head and made the shifters usable again.

The shifter seemed to be jammed due to rust and since there were no decent disassembly instructions online, I was having a bit of a tough time trying to figure out how to make the shifter unstuck. The only little video on the internals was from Rivendell bike, but it seems like the ratchet mechanism was mounted in reverse (in the video) or probably was a different design and I had a bit of fun figuring out how to put things back together

In reality, its pretty simple design and one has to be careful about 2 really small parts inside. One of them being a really tiny spring “E”, probably easy to replace and the ratchet “F” which would be impossible to find anywhere, so take care while taking things apart and putting them back together.

My major problem was that the mount “C” had gotten stuck to the movable shifter lever “A” and it took me a while and disassembly of my other shifter to figure that it was actually stuck. I had to knock it out with a rubber mallet. After cleaning every single piece with alcohol and lubing them with a thin coating of grease on every contact surface, I assembled them and everything worked like a charm.

In case someone else is in my shoes, I have included some pictures of the disassembled shifters and partial assemblies. Hope it helps.

Track Notes