Some last-minute touches for the bike this afternoon. I had a spare mount for the Garmin GPS, so I installed that. (I may not need the out-front mount that I’ve got on order which won’t arrive for another week.) And I put on the lights again after having charged them up last night.

I was still puzzling about the shifting problem, where the derailleur would move to larger cogs just fine but not smaller ones. My intuition (and a lot of bulletin board posts) suggested the shifter cable was sticking, so I removed it and reamed out all the cable housing ends with the awl and put it back together. The cable is moving completely freely, but the problem remained.

While I was pondering the next step, I decided to have another go at the bar end plugs. The Halfakid had tried with all his might to push them into the bar ends, but couldn’t get them in past the first notch. I’d shrugged at the time and figured that’s how it was meant to be, but then I noticed they were falling off. So I loosened the grips, brake levers and shifters to move them all inwards. Then I took the mallet to the bar end plugs. That’s all it took to get them in snugly. Then of course I had to retighten all those bits.

Finally I had another look at the installation guide for the derailleur, and that showed me the problem. I had too much vertical gap between the derailleur’s jockey wheel and the largest cog. I backed off the B screw quite a bit and then ran through all the gears. Perfect shifting, up and down the range.

Ready for Sunday’s ride.