With less than 1000KM on the bike Neil’s rear changer decided to stop working. Now normally this would be a warranty problem on such a new and barely used bike, however as Neil is a poor student he bought this “New” bike second-hand and therefore has no warranty with it.
Basically what has happened is there is a small spring broken in the lever that needs replacing. A brake lever can be broken down into just a few components, each component having a multitude of parts, the body, the lever, the hydraulic piston and the gear changer.
This is the gear changing component in one piece. It can be removed from the brake lever assembly in minutes.
The gear changer unit is small and on the 8020 can be removed from a lever in a matter of minutes, as long as the lever is off the bars.
Unfortunately you cannot buy this small unit, so the broken spring means you have to throw away a lever that costs 200 Euro minimum. Now that is ridiculous.
Two seasons ago Neil had a crash on his old bike with a 8000 lever and it broke, however the spring in that lever was intact so he decided to take it apart, learning in the process how to do it, recovering the spring. One lesson learnt here, a 8000 lever needs the actual lever removed from the body to be able to remove the gear changer component. So of course we removed the lever on the 8020 too, mistake. No need to remove the lever and over an hour spent getting it back together again.
Watch the first of three videos here
So now he stripped down the 8020 lever to get the gear component out, then took that apart and reassembled with the recovered spring, I make this sound easy, but almost certainly 8 hours worth of effort as there was no guide on how to do it. Still what else is there to do in a lock down…
Watch the second and longest video, brake down the component only if you want to do it….
It is possible to repair a 8000 series lever, however Shimano don’t want you too, in preference to spending 200 Euro for a new lever, absolutely outrageous stuff. At the least they should sell the gear mechanism and allow that to be fitted separately if the lever is off the bike a ten minute job.
Eureka, no thanks to Shimano fixed
I know, we live in a consumer world, brakes and gear changers being integrated into one was a great step forward in bicycle technology, but from an environmental point of view is it really OK to be throwing away such a serious piece of bike technology simply because the spring failed…