robertmccormack

Will Shimano XTR 9-Speed MTB shifters work with my Shimano 105 Road triple front derailleur?

Btw, I'm assuming the shifters are friction mode for the front derailleur-- is this true?

bboy314

These will be indexed front and rear. The front may not work well, mixing mtb shifter and road derailleur. If the derailleur is appropriate for your chainring setup, you may want to source a flat bar road front shifter such as the R3500. Or if you do want friction front shifting, use a grip or thumb shifter. Rear should be fine as-is.

veganbikes

For 9 speed and below generally everything was compatible (minus a few oddballs like some of the 74xx DA stuff) so you should be fine. It is all indexed. To get friction you would need thumb, downtube or barcon shifters but it should work decently well enough.

cyccommute 

bboy314 is correct. Road front derailers don't play nice with mountain bike shifters for 9 speed and below. Mountain bike front derailers don't play nice with road shifters for the same components as well. The rear derailer will work just fine with either in 9 speed or below. Get a mountain front derailer if you are going to use mountain bike shifters. I would suggest something lower on the Shimano line because their higher end front derailers tend to be finicky for set up.

mpetry912 

agreed mostly with the above. Questions like "will X work with Y" where X and Y come from different manufacturers, and maybe even generations of components, are very difficult to answer with the degree of certainty that the OP expects.

not to mention the definition of "work". Will it jockey the chain back and forth ? Maybe. Will it shift with precision and flawless reliability ? Hard to say.

Given what a used MTB front derailleur costs, that would be the route I'd suggest, but it's hard to advise the OP further because we don't know if he's runninng double or triple chainrings, etc.

/markp

robertmccormack

Thanks for clearing this up!

ShannonM

For reasons that nobody has ever been able to explain, Shimano MTB and road front derailleurs have different cable-pull-to-derailleur-movement (actuation) ratios. This didn't matter back before Shimano decided that indexed front shifting was a thing that was needed.

But they did, and it does.

Your 9-speed XTR, or any 9-speed Shimano MTB shifters, will not index any Shimano front derailleur over any crankset ever made. (I imagine that one could machine chainring bolt spacers that could make it work, but nobody's ever bothered to try.)

Use a Shimano MTB front derailleur. 9-speed Deore LX or above will shift better than you do, and last forever. The XTR, as sweet as it was, is just bling... which isn't a bad reason to buy one.

--Shannon

70sSanO

If you can find an XTR FD-M900/901 it will work with your 9 speed shifters and run between 26-48 chainrings. You might be able to push it to a 50t outer ring.

A lot of MTB FD’s won’t cover a road outer ring.

John

KCT1986

The difference in actuation ratio for FD between MTB & road really happened when road went to brifters. A possible reason is that early brifters had the shift unit in the very front of the pod. To keep the old actuation ratio of road and MTB (more cable pull), the cable take-up spool would have to be large or the 'throw' of the lever would have to be longer. A large spool would make the 'bulbous' look of the early brifter even worse, (picture a ST-6400 with an even larger 'knob' behind the name plate). Or a 'throw' that would have you push the A lever (larger lever) much further to move the FD to a larger chainring. This is my take of why brifter era FD use a shorter cable pull.

Below is a comparison of FDs from about the same time, road RX-100 triple for downtube non-index and XT MTB. Based on the appearance of the cable attachment arm and the cage pivot, they appear that they would actuate similarly.



Below is another FD for a road double, pre-brifter (many FD had the same design at the time, late 80s-early 90s). This used a pivot that moved at a diagonal angle to the frame, which needed more cable pull. All of these type was replaced with standard pivot styles (shorter pull) when brifters were introduced, (eg FD-A550 to FD-A551).



These are some observations that I've discovered while playing with various shifters and FDs.

LesterOfPuppets

I reckon you could get a front trigger shifter from a flatbar road group. Tiagra for instance.