Comments on: How to Recondition RapidFire Plus Shifters

By: Petey

Petey — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:16:48 +0000

Nice one, it worked ! Thanks Mr, you just saved me 38 quid which the shop wanted to charge me for new shifters !!!

By: Bradley Smith

Bradley Smith — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:30:16 +0000

Wonderful tutorial. I had an old shimano Alivio left shifter that was gummed up. It worked fine for the first and second chainrings, but wouldn’t click up to the third click – there was just no resistance in the lever when I pushed it.

It turns out that the pawl was gummed up, and not springing into the next hook on the ratchet.

I had to take dust covers off the front and rear of my shifter, and undo one interior bolt at the bottom of the mechanism. I should’ve paid more attention to how it came apart, cause it was a pain to figure out how to put the 3 parts that came off back together.

Anyway, it’s working like new now, after I thought that it was forever broken! One thing I’m not sure about is what lubricants to use. The bolt and washer I took off kinda sandwich the parts together, and if I tighten it too much it jams. Adding grease between the washer and the bottom plate of the mechanism seems to fix this (much better than the light oil alone), but I think that if that grease gets near the pawl spring, or other small parts, it’ll gum em up again :-/

By: Gregory Batty

Gregory Batty — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 07:36:12 +0000

Thank you so much for kindly making this well-directed, well edited video! You just saved me many dollars… Thought some of the mech was broken and that the shifter was a goner… but NO! Cracked my shifter open, sprayed some lubricant in there, and life was fully restored!

By: Brion

Brion — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:53:15 +0000

Thanks! I hate these things… such a pain to deal with.

By: DOWNHILL MANIAC

DOWNHILL MANIAC — Mon, 31 May 2010 01:05:15 +0000

Awesome info awesome site. Can’t thank you guys enough for the knowledge and help. The video tuition is priceless.

DOWNHILL MANIAC

By: Gary Cremeens

Gary Cremeens — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:23:40 +0000

Thank you sooooo much! This is an outstanding tutorial! My bike had sat unused in my Phoenix garage for about 3 years. The grease in the rapidfire shifter had turned to concrete from the heat and dryness here. Flushing with disassembled, flushed with WD40 and lubed with Tri-flow has got the rear shifter completely working again, and the front shifter is almost there. 1 & 2 are working and shifting fine. Still have to get 3 going on the front. Maybe letting the lube penetrate for a while will get that going.

Your site is great and I will be visiting frequently.

By: Alexis

Alexis — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:20:29 +0000

One huge big thank you. I was just about to go and buy a new shifter and thought I’d have a quick trawl across the internet to find if there was a fix it way first and came to across your site almost instantly. I almost as instantly had a working shifter again. I’ll be back to find out how to fix all the other annoyances on my bikes. Keep up the great work.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:55:38 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have some 12 year old Shimano LX rapidfire shifters on my bike that have been severely limited over the past few years. I’ve casually poked around them, but to no avail. After watching this video I completely removed all the dirt covers, and bathed the guts in WD-40, and after bathed them in lube. After becoming quite upset that your steps above didn’t work, and fearing the worst, I put everything back together and manually pulled derailleurs into position while thumbing through the gears and praying. Somehow the light cable pressure forced the stuck gear positions out of retirement. Thanks again, I’m so glad I didn’t have to upgrade my drivetrain.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:17:31 +0000

Thank you very much for the helpful info on repairing a quickfire gear shifter–the simple tip of spraying some cleaning fluid in and cleaning out the gunk was very much appreciated. It saved me from opening up the unit and getting into that minefield! Wonderfully helpful–Tom

By: wogga

wogga — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:06:05 +0000

Thanks for intro to the repair of these little things. After finding only one other site that made repair seem quite awful I watched your video and then began the careful dis-assembly of my Shimano Alivio shifter. WD40 helps to degunk and yes folks should have some spray grease on hand too. I would say that most of the issues with those such as the alivio can be solved by removing the core unit from the housing. In my case I found (after 30 min of careful observation) that the core parts fit into the metal housing in a specific way – there are two little bumps. Mine wasn’t in correctly. Amazingly, after adjusting that and reassembling a very clean unit, it clicks up and down happily now, where before it would only go from 1 towards 7.