Originally Posted by
Trakhak
An easy test: with the bike on a repair stand, turn the cranks with your right hand while pushing the bottom of the rear derailleur parallelogram inward with your left hand. With the inner-limit screw backed out all the way, the chain should easily reach the cassette's largest cog. (Be careful not to overshoot and push the chain into the spokes!)
If the chain does indeed reach the largest cog, that tells you that the problem would likely be solved by replacing the index/friction shifter with a shifter from the pre-indexing era.
Tried it and to my surprise worked. Not very well but it still worked. So tightened up the cabling a little bit and it works (badly). The cable is a bit frayed so I will have to replace it. I do have a 7 speed cassette available so I'll have to decide if I want to stick with the 9 speed or change it out.
I also learned not all dynamo lights have a bracket that will work with cantilever brakes. I was hoping to build a dynamo wheel. The light I have doesn't have the correct bracket and it gets in the way of the front brake cable. I didn't realize dynamo lights can be so picky.