Shifting Shimano for the Dummy Cyclist

Shimano STI shifters

Ah, well: another day, another eHow.com "contributor" who grabbed a wad of semi-related titles and pretended to know enough about the topic to write helpful content. We'd already caught Tammie Painter writing about Shimano Pedals and a Shimano Altus groupset (not to mention bicycle tires), now the former biology student and fantasy writer is back to try to explain "How to Use Shimano Gears" at SportsRec.com. Needless to say, it's no better than her first three bites of the eHow apple.

As is her wont, Painter linked to a random Sheldon Brown page (a glossary of Shimano terminology) and to the home page of the Shimano company itself, neither of which contains the "information" Tammie shared. That dreck starts out with the notion that,

"The gears on your bicycle allow you to adjust how easily [sic] it is to pedal. If you encounter a hill, big or small, shifting to an easier gear will help you climb it. When riding on flat surfaces or at a decline [sic], you can shift into a harder gear to maintain a nice pedaling cadence."

Never mind that gearing on a bicycle isn't actually to adjust the "easilyness" of pedaling, it's purpose is to maximize power transfer between the pedals and the wheels; Painter at least got the sense of "easier" and "harder" right. Will wonders never cease? Moving right along, Tammie broke her instructions into three parts, artfully (not) explaining how to manipulate twist-grip shifters, "thumb shifters" (which Shimano trademarked as Rapid-Fire® shifters), and "a brake lever system on a road bike." When describing how to use the integrated shifters, Painter said to,

"[Use] your fingers to press the lever inward (toward the stem of the handlebar) to go into a harder gear and press either the small lever located on the side of the brake hood or the lever behind the brake lever to move into an easier gear."

We must say here that our staffers have been riding with integrated shifters since the 90s, and none of them has ever seen a shifter with the small lever "on the side of the brake hood," but that's apparently a description of the early Shimano Sora groupset (which no one here has ever seen). Tammie also shared other (mis)information, including "On road bikes the front gears are often quite different in size, especially if you have three chainrings." That is, of course, exactly backward. She also warned twice that your "chain might fall off," once when you shift "to two extremes" and once if you don't "push the shifter completely to move the chain into the next gear. " The first is, of course really a warning about excessive chain wear, while the second is just plain stupid.

Tammie's tenuous ability to reword some text she found at an undisclosed location notwithstanding, we're almost certain Painter missed the boat with her exposé of "how to" shift. It's highly likely that the OQ wanted to know when to change from gear to gear and what pattern you would have to follow. Someone who actually rides could help, but our Dumbass of the Day? Not so much.

copyright © 2020-2022 scmrak

DD - BICYCLES