Grip shift gears - any good?

[Goochie]

Further to my recent thread about a bike for my wife, I've found a well priced bike on EBay that looks to fit the bill perfectly, however it has "grip shift" which is something I remember coming in in the mid 90's. I notice few brand new bikes seem to have this these days - so it any good?

I wcant help but imagine accidentally changing gear simply by moving hand position.

[militantmandy]

Goochie said:

I wcant help but imagine accidentally changing gear simply by moving hand position.

Correct! Avoid! Must be thousands of other bikes for sale with rapid fire gears instead.

[Roger645]

Normally the gear change bit is a part of the grip and not the whole thing. The shimano ones are quite "stiff" in their movement so not really prone to changing gear accidently.

[M400 NBL]

I've just had a lot of work done to my old cannondale and can't believe how much better rapid fire is better than grip shift.Grip shift can be a bit hit and miss when selecting a gear and a nightmare to turn with wet hands if it rains.

[LRdriver II]

XC racing whippets love grip shift as its lightweight.

Weirdly enough, I read somewhere that women actually find it more intuitive to use grishift as opposed to triggers as the logic is different.

I like gripshift but dont like the springy feel when you try to rotate your hand forward to go to a smaller cog.

On front derailleurs, I love the fact you can trim it alot better than the 3 positions available only on the triggers. Ideally, gripshift on the front, and high end trigger for the back so you can shift multiple gears in one push/pull.

pah.. this is thread drift.. just get a good quality bike for her thats as light as possible for the money and keep it running smoothly.

[mk1fan]

Only way to see if you / she gets on with gripshift is to try it. Doesn't matter what x or y think about it. I'm assuming they're Sram gripshifts. You can get Sram trigger shifters off e-Bay easily enough if you don't get on with gripshift.

[matt-ITR]

A top quality gripshift (like SRAM X0 or X9) is great and the choice of almost all SRAM sponsored XC racers.
It's light, reliable and has benefits like being able to go through the whole cassette in one movement and the ability to trim the front mech.

But... Cheap gripshift, as fitted to many low-end bikes is rubbish and I'd avoid it like the plauge.

[RobDickinson]

But then think that XC racers will do just about anything and put up with a lot to loose a bit of weight.

So, is your wife likely to be charging at the front of an xc race in the near future?

Have grip shifts on an old bike, never again.

[Trooper2]

Gripsts......no thank you!

SRAM is a bit better.

[matt-ITR]

RobDickinson said:

Have grip shifts on an old bike, never again.

My point exactly.
People have negative views on gripshift mainly based on older/crap systems.

It's like saying that Rapidfire is rubbish because I tried Shimano Acera and it was rubbish.

[Beyond Rational]

It wouldn't matter to me how good they were, I dislike the entire concept.