New grip shifts

I had wanted to replace the old shifters during the restoration. I bought a left-right pair of eight-speed Grip Shifts from Easy Racers when I picked up the frame. I forget the reason just now, but due to some issue, I retained the old left-hand (front) shifter but installed the right-side one.

Not too long after I started riding the new setup, that right-hand shift knob started to slip. Under the pressure of my awesome right hand, its rubber grip began to slip. It would pull away from the mechanism and I'd push it back in place.

This became increasingly annoying so I decided to replace it yet again. I went to local bike stores and looked at the shifters being used on modern mountain bikes. Some wouldn't work for my bike, for example because the shifter was integrated with the brake lever, and I need to keep my separate brake levers. Others looked rather cheap. Actually the nicest-looking grip shift is the one made by Shimano as part of their Nexus system. Unfortunately, the Nexus is an internally-geared hub. If I were setting up a new, non-electric, recumbent, the Nexus hub and related parts would make a very nice installation. But the center of my rear wheel is taken up by the BionX motor, and it seemed very likely that the Nexus shifter would not be compatible with my external 8-speed derailleur.

What I settled on was the SRAM "centera" twist-grip. It has a longer grip that looks well-bonded to the mechanism. It also has a somewhat toy-like gear indicator but otherwise its quality seems good for a plastic part.

I ordered a pair of shifters from Amazon; they arrived yesterday and I installed them this morning. Here is the right one in place,

...and here is the left one.

Happily the installation lacked drama. Installing cables often results in operatic drama and high-pitched swearing fits, but not this time. The nearest it came to that was when I was trying to fit the old, longer cable to the rear. The one that came with the new shifter was juuuuuust a few inches too short.

This meant threading the old cable tip down through the core of the shifter. And of course, one wire didn't want to go, wanted to spiral back and jam. I fired up my old soldering iron and soldered the tip to hold the wires together. Then it went. And the adjustment wasn't hard either, and it shifts smoothly: tick-clunk, tick-clunk.

Of course the indicator reads "backward" with 8 being the lowest gear and 1, the highest. But that's always been true because the derailleur works backward, pulling toward the higher gears.