ascherer 

I’ve set my wife’s Lotus Eclair up with flat bars and indexed Microshift trigger shifters for a Tiagra 3x10 drivetrain that came off a 2009-2010 Cannondale Synapse. She’s cool with the rear shifting but finds the front shifter requires more effort than she’s comfortable with. She has small hands, and it’s true that it requires some oomph to move the front up and down. I’m not very triple-savvy, is this typical? Is there another FD that doesn’t have such beefy springs? Another route may be a compact front double, but she kind of wants to keep the triple for various reasons. Thoughts, suggestions, prayers?

thumpism 

A friend with RapidFire Exage stuff on his old Diamond Back likes the Grip Shift I put on it. Shifting with his thumbs was hurting his tendonitis and the twist action seemed to work better for him.

thook

i'll speculate the most effort is in getting from the middle ring to the outer?

what is her attachment to the triple, if i may ask? as i've done with my wife, i'd try to encourage that a compact double giving close to or the very same gearing would not only ease the shifting, but also simplify it greatly...given you have the ten gears in the back already. i don't know yours, but my wife....she likes simple and easy

ShannonM

It's the shifter. Front upshifts on under-bar shifters have always been like that, and some people hate it. I'm a 5'11" dude with big hands and a pretty strong grip, and I despise all under-bar shifters for exactly this reason. A front grip shifter or thumbshifter won't do this, but neither are indexed, and the asymmetry bugs the hell out of a lot of people.

Thumbshifters are the only flat-bar shifters I like. I used to like GripShift a lot, (8-speed X-Rays,) until I blew apart an XT rear derailleur trying to make a standing bail-oui downshift at full honk. And cable replacement on them has sucked since 1988.

--Shannon

John E

Indexing is a particularly stupid idea on front shifters. I have SunTour ratchet thumb shifters on my mountain bike. The front is blessedly nonindexed, to allow cage position feathering, and I always run the rear in non-index mode, which let me easily upgrade from 7 speeds to 8. I was having trouble with the front/left shifter, which began to require an inordinate amount of force if tightened enough to prevent slippage. The problem was that I had worn out the ratchet mechanism; a new shift lever solved the problem. Yes, above-bar thumb shifters are the way to go.

bwilli88 

Look for a set of Shimano RL770 flat bar shifters, they are Ultegra level parts and the one set I have is AWESOME. I have 3 sets stuck in the post office coming from the Netherlands and another set sitting on PA. The brake lavers are also very good.

RiddleOfSteel

Some trigger shifters are tough with their front shifting, others are fine. I find thumb shifters to be clumsy and tough to push if you don't want them ghost shifting (aka tightened down). If you knew how the Microshift stuff feels when its without cable, then you can perhaps try with some Shimano ones. My experience with Microshift is nearly zero as I trust a larger company that has proven they can make a great looking and great operating range of products (Shimano). Shimano trigger shifters are pretty nice, and I've come into contact with many of them (usually down range from XT/XTR).

ShannonM

This pretty much illustrates the divide.

Most people are fine with thumb-push shifting. A few of us absolutely hate it. And we haters cannot be convinced otherwise... because we're not wrong. Pretty much, if you hate them on first shift, you're never going to not hate them, and the fact that lots of other people don't hate them is irrelevant to the fact that you hate them, and are not wrong to do so.

If you hate shifters that you have to push with your thumb, the only option is a shifter that you don't have to push with your thumb. Ironically, this usually means thumbshifters, which you don't have to shift with your thumbs.

--Shannon

ascherer 

Thanks, all. She’s fine with the action and location it the effort on the front is notably more than the rear. I’ve been using Microshift R10 brifters on one of my bikes for a couple of seasons and they work very well. The triggers are well made, smooth action and solid build. I had thumb shifter mounts on drop bars in an earlier experiment and the effort was also hard, maybe harder. That’s why I suspect the derailleur rather than the shifter. Anyone got a front triple hanging around they don’t need?

RiddleOfSteel

Is the FD a Microshift as well? If it's a Shimano unit, I don't think it would be any more difficult to shift it with any shifter as a 10s Tiagra FD would have used a pretty standard design. [Side note: the toughest STI shifter I ever ran into was 6800 Ultegra with the long arm FD, meant to "make front shifting as easy as the rear," which it most certainly did not do. 7400/7700/7800 and 7900 DA and their Ultegra counterparts were all plenty easy...]

What is the front ring combo and the rear cassette combo? Apart from disassembling the entire front shifting system, checking shifter and FD operation (and making sure they're good), getting high quality/low friction cable and housing (makes a difference!), and then putting it back together, going to a double or 1x with a carefully chosen ring/cassette combo is what she would have to consider. A double would still require one tough shift effort, so that's not really a gain. A 1x system that gets her a low gear that's as low gear combo as she has already, as well as a high gear that's nearly identical to her high gear combo, would save her all the front shifting trouble while having no drawback as far as range selection.

I don't know what kind of bike rider she is (super casual, enthusiast, mega serious), but if it's more to the casual end, it seems that many I have observed use the 3 highest gear combos possible (all on the big ring)--whether riding or starting off from a stop--for normal riding, and then as soon as there is a hill, it's the absolute lowest gear. It's essentially binary, and a bit extreme. 1x just simplifies things there as the middle 973 gears combos offered aren't needed.

And if 10 shift suggestions aren't enough, there's always Di2.

herr_hest

Of the different triple's ive used I havent had to work them particularly hard.
One thing i do know though is that the shifting is in direct correlation between the angle of the cable stop on the frame towards where the cable is fastened on the derailleur. You want some angle as the shifter will need a good amount of force to start moving.

My guess is that the angle of the shifter cable is not acute enough. If the force is greates when pushing the chain from the smallest ring to the middle one, this is probably the case.

Is it a top pull or a down pull?
If top pull then it's harder to remedy. With a down pull, however, you can adjust the cable guide under the frame to adjust the cable angle.

RiddleOfSteel

Good point. If it is a Tiagra FD, it's likely top pull as Tiagra is a road group and not a touring/MTB/city/hybrid group. Could be a Microshift--we need pictures!

Andy_K 

Are the Microshift triggers intended for mountain bike use? For 7-10 speed Shimano rear shift pull was the same between road and mountain, but the front pull was different. I have experienced the problem you’re describing when trying to mix them, not to mention trouble getting it to index properly. It can be done, but it has to be just right.

i agree with @John E, indexing and front shifting is a bad combination. If your wife doesn’t mind mismatched shifters, consider some combination that allows friction shifting in front, like a stem-mounted, bar-end, or even downtube front shifter.

due ruote 

I was having similar difficulty with the triple on our tandem, and received this reply in the mechanic’s forum. Worth a look.

Check your cable routing where the cable attaches to the derailleur. If there is a little finger in the cable route the cable is supposed to go over that little finger. If you intuitively run the cable under the finger it affects cable pull leverage.

hokiefyd 

If your wife likes twist shifters, you have a few options. Shimano's Revoshift are indexed on the front on some of the nicer models. I particularly like the SL-RS45 and -RS47 models, and have a few pairs of these in both 7s and 8s on a few of my bikes. The front indexing works just fine -- all combinations work without rub. And the nice part about these is you can twist the shifter forward smoothly, so you don't get that loud clank when you downshift on the front.

If you or her are into thumb shifters, you obviously have a lot of choices. I have some nice ones (Microshift 9s) and also some cheap ones (like the typical friction only Sunrace stuff), and also some ones in the middle. One of my favorites is from the Shimano TZ500 line. The SL-TZ500 shifter actually works very nicely for the price. It's 7s indexed on the right shifter the the rear and friction on the left shifter for the front.

ascherer 

Thanks for all the info! After some riding yesterday the flat bar experiment has been deemed a “no”. The value of drop bars and their multiple hand positions was evidenced by the lack thereof. So we’re going to revert to some configuration or the other. This has been a project for some seasons now, good thing I love to tinker.

Since y’all asked: the derailleurs and crankset are all Tiagra road, 4700 I think. Shifter is a road series. Here’s pics of the soon-to-be removed components:







We’ll go back to drop bars and possibly friction shifters, TBD. I have a double that may be pressed into duty, could end up with a 2x7 Mega Range, could be a funky mix of indexed rear and who knows what for the front.

Cyclist0108

I have two types of front shifters that work nicely:

1. Friction.
2. Electronic.

Everything else is a pain in the hand.

John E

That about sums it up.