Seven gets you six…

“My gears aren’t working very well. It slips a bit in some gears so I figured I’d bring it in for a tune-up.” I had changed out the bars a while back to some that put the rider in a more upright position and at the time, I’m sure I would have checked to make sure it was working in all gears. And it was still working just okay in all gears, but in the smaller cogs, it took two “clicks” to get the derailleur to move one gear position. Something ain’t right. Shifter is for seven speeds. Inspect the freewheel, one, two, three, four, five, six, seve… Oh, that could be a problem, six-speed freewheel with seven-speed shifter. A very easy fix and the entire job ended up being less than the cost of a whole tune-up (the brakes and everything else were fine).

It’s interesting because the shifter is original, the wheel is original and matches the front, nothing has ever been changed or added except when I changed out the bars. However, there was the time her son borrowed the bike for a while and…