THE GEAR CHANGE CABLES

I'm writing this in retrospect so it may not follow the exact sequence of events.  

Firstly, I had to buy a pair of trunnions that secure the ends of the gear change cables in the gear selection leaver.

Having  decided on my cable route I was able to enter the gear change inner cable into the housing and through the retaining trunnions.  The cable ends are retained in the trunnions by grub screws, eventually tightened with an Allen key.  

I didn't find adjusting the gear change mechanism that easy. 

The selector leaver is first moved to the neutral position as show above.  By rotating the rear wheel and moving the selection leaver through its four detente positions.  It's possible to identify the one where there is no connection to the crank shaft,  i.e. neutral. 

Later on I realised that it was important to note where the selector leaver was for each of the three gears.  I found the importance of this when I had to make a choice as to which of the two gear change cables attached to which end of the gear change leaver. Obviously if you twist the handlebar control to select first gear it must pull the selector leaver to the first gear position.  To avoid mistakes I identified the lower cable with tap at both ends. Trust me, you may think you will remember which cable is which but with only a slight distraction you will be back checking the cable run to identify the cable you want.






 


Having positioned the  the selector leaver in the neutral position, I checked that the handlebar control was also in the neutral position.  






Now I was able to select the correct cable to attach to the end of the selector leaver via the trunnions.  Any spare cable had to be positioned inside the selector box.  With both cables in position I nipped up the allen screw to secure the cables and checked that the three gears plus neutral could be selected.  If the allen screws are not tightened sufficiently they may slip and you have to start all over again.

I had difficulty in deciding just how much slack there should be.  Any slack can be taken up using the two adjusting screws that secure the outer cable at the entry to the selector mechanism.  My memory, way back when I had my LD, says there always slack and the gear change mechanism was not a thing of beauty.  There always appeared to be far too much slack (or was it stretch?). 







I finally checked the tightness of the two allen screws before fitting the cover  I think the selector adjustment is now good enough for a test but  fully expect to have to adjust it further as time progresses.