El Gato27

Seen a couple of touring bikes on CL with brifters. From what I've been reading the preferred setup is bar end shifters. Should I consider this a show stopper? Some of these look like good deals. I guess I should add I've never toured, something I'm intent on starting, hence the CL search. And I've never used bar end shifters, have used brifters. thanks.

mdilthey

Brifters are fine. Slightly more complicated if you don't know how to adjust derailleurs, but still fine. I don't think it should matter if it's a nice bike. Many people even prefer brifters.

robow

+1

staehpj1

No everyone uses or likes bar end shifters. I like briftersthe touring bike I used on my first coast to coast and other longish tours had brifters by choice.

I also like down tube shifters OK and used them on my second coast to coast tour.

I don't like bar end shifters at all. I find they get bumped out of gear when parked and get bumped by my knees when standing to climb.

mstateglfr 

I'd suggest you find a shop with a touring bike in your size with bar ends and try em.

No sense in focusing on bar end shifting if you don't like it.

Brifters are fine if you like em.
I prefer bar ends, but that's also for more than just touring bikes.

You can always buy a bike with brifters and swap out bar ends for $40-90 of you like the bar end shifting but also like a bike with brifters. Pretty straightforward swap.

LuckySailor

Don't get duped into the idea that the preferred shifter is a bar end. You go for comfort and what works for you. I did, and while I don't regret I got them, I will change them to brifters. Bar ends are slow to use compared to brifters. You will find sometimes that the gear you have shifted into is not the one you want. This happens after you have put your hands back on the handle bars. Then you have to shift again, removing your hand from the handle bar again to shift and then repositioning. When your just riding around town doing your normal thing or training, it is not evident as a hassle or an irritant. I just finished a 74 day tour across Canada. I found them to be annoying sometimes, so I will change them out in the spring if not sooner. BTW, out of 13 of us on tour, 8 have brifters. I don't consider their bikes any less of tour grade than my Trek 520. Good luck.

timdow

I prefer brifters also.

ThermionicScott 

Paging @cyccommute.

Doug64

I'd consider the brifters a bonus. Our daughter's LHT was the last bike in our family's fleet to be converted from bar-ends to STI shifters. She thanked me several times on tours we have done together since the conversion.

Brifters are really nice when you need to do a double shift, both front and rear, you move your little fingers, not your hands. They are also good when going slow on the uphill and need to shift. No moving of the hands if you are on the hoods.

We've toured a lot with brifters. My wife's set has a little over 15,000 miles on them with no problems. I've also crashed several times, having to pick debris out of the shifters, and still no problems. I tighten the mounting clamps just tight enough to be secure, but loose enough that they will move in a crash.

Daughter's LHT doing double duty.

djb

I would add that sti shifters always benefit from a little regular spray of any silicone based type spray once a season, or at beginning and at end of season. The stuff I use is Jig-a-loo and spray both the innards of my brifters as well as the trigger shifters on my other bike. These wd-40 type sprays will help keep gunk from accumulating inside, and reduce friction which in a gunged up brifter, over time will cause wear of the bits inside. My nearly six season old Tiagra shifters seem to shift just as well as when new, and unless I was going to the back and beyond, wouldnt hesitate taking them on a trip.
They certainly are nice to use for easy, quick shifting.

bikemig 

I picked up a 2009 fuji touring bike recently and it has brifters. I really like brifters but I will replace them with bar end shifters. There's a lot to be said for using friction with your front chainrings.

niknak

Brifters are very reliable. Shimano brifters have a tendency to chew up shifter cables over time. Before a big trip I'd replace the cables just to be safe. A few $ of maintenance work is all that's needed.

andrewclaus

Actually, brifters are now a requirement for me, after the past two decades of excellent service from one pair of brifters. I looked at a pretty good deal a few weeks ago but it had bar-end shifters so I passed it up.

bikemig 

I respect the opinions in posts no. 12 and 13 but the problem (or potential problem) with brifters is not lack of reliability. Shimano triple brifters are designed to work with a shimano road triple which has a 130/74 bcd. That's not the best choice for touring. They typically come stock with 50-39-30 chainrings and the 30 is pretty high. You can drop as low as 24 up front but you cannot drop below a 39 (or perhaps a 38) in the middle chainring. That means you end up with a 15 tooth jump between the middle and small chainring. It's been my experience that it can be a pain to make a front derailleur work with this big a drop. I like a 50-39 just fine for general road riding but I find the gearing too high for loaded touring.

By the way, you really want a 24 tooth chainring (or smaller) on a loaded touring bike. There is a thread on BF where this was discussed and while there was some disagreement as to how low to go (there always is), the consensus was to go as low as possible.

You could look for a different crank but there are problems when you do this. Shimano does not recommend this. Take a look at adventure cycling's review of the salsa vaya (which comes with brifters and a 130/74 bcd crank) where this problem is discussed: https://www.adventurecycling.org/defa...aya_OGrady.pdf

There are at least 2 better choices than the shimano road triple for touring: an old school square taper 110/74 bcd like one of Sugino's triple cranks or a new school shimano trekking crank (which you can buy with 44-32-22). Maybe you can get brifters to work right with either of these cranks (and I've seen threads on BF suggesting this is possible with the trekking crank) but this apparently is not recommended by Shimano (see the adventure cycling review).

The bottom line is that friction is superior, IMHO, to indexing when it comes to the front chainrings. You can trim the FD to your heart's content and this will work with all sorts of cranks and chainrings that might not work right with indexing. Why lock yourself into a shifting system which limits your choices in cranks? Don't get me wrong. There is a lot to love about brifters. Not so much, though, for touring.

There are good reasons why a lot of the really great touring bikes come stock with bar end shifters (e.g., novara randonnee, 2015-2016 fuji touring bike, Trek 520, surly LHT, soma saga if bought as a complete bike from Soma). You can go with the advice of a few posters on BF. Or you can go with the advice of a lot of product managers whose job it is to spec touring bikes. Take your pick.

gerryl

Who cares what other people prefer. Other people aren't riding your bike, you are. I for one can't stand bar end shifters, they would be my absolute last choice in shifters.

bradtx

El Gato27, One of my touring bikes has bar-ends and the other has STI, I like both. The STI bike is a high mileage example with 15 year old shifters that exhibit some crash damage.

While one STI, of many, in the household did die in an epic crash losing the brake lever it's been my experience that a STI shifter will more likely fail if there has been long periods of inactivity and the grease hardens, which is fixed with a WD40 flushing and a re-lube with something like LPS2.

Brad

10 Wheels

14,500 miles on brifters...No Problems

djb

completely agree with you on the gearing issue, especially the midring constraints to a 38 or 39...but, and its a big but, it is perfectly doable to put smaller cranks on brifter bikes. Doug64 from this forum has done this many times on diff bikes, specifically using 44/32/22 cranksets, using a diff width bb with diff length spindle.
One caveat to this is that the 9 speed Tiagra front derailleur that I use and others use, including Doug, works just so darn well, but perhaps other front deraiileurs dont.
On a couple of 50/39/30 cranks, I changed the 30 to a 28 or 26, but do regret that the mid ring cant be changed to a 36 or 34, so yes I agree that the 130/74 is not ideal for touring, but smaller cranks can and have been very successfully put onto brifter bikes.

I will do this at some point in the future, as riding with brifters is just so much nicer for me than other shifting methods. I have a 110/74 crank on my old touring bike with 50/40/24 and all it needs is to change out the 40 to a 36 and I'd be all set.

ps--all this talk is with square taper, so I realize that this is a factor as well. I dont know how external bearing cranks play with these switcheroos of chainline diff between diff types of cranks.

bikemig 

I hear you. I run brifters with a ritchey mtb triple (44-32-22) on one of my bikes. I got it to work but it took a fair amount of tweaking because it was clear that the brifters were not designed to work with this particular crank. This would have been much easier to set up with friction up front (like a bar end or a down tube shifter).

I recently picked up a 1992 trek 950 mtb. Seriously nice bike. The PO switched out the thumb shifters to indexing 7 speed trigger shifters. The front derailleur doesn't shift right with this set up. It is an older deore lx FD and it doesn't play nicely with indexing so I get some chain rub. My choices are to get a modern style FD or go with a thumb shifter (friction again) on the left. Again, this would not be a problem if Shimano used friction on the left and indexing on the right.

I recently picked up a 2009 fuji touring bike. Nice bike. It has tiagra brifters, tiagra FD, and a 130/74 bcd. I took it for a ride yesterday and the chain dropped off the inside. Obviously I need to fix that. I didn't feel like fixing it in the middle of a ride, though, and just worked around it for the ride. With indexing on the left, this would have been less of an issue because I could have feathered the front derailleur so that the chain did not drop off when shifting to the small chain ring. Again, this is a place where friction on the left, indexing on the right is better.

So this is not so much a criticism of brifters (I really like them) but an argument for why friction on the left, indexing on the right is a better choice when going with a wide ranging triple on a touring bike.

djb

re chain dropping off the inside, I've had this happen with friction front shifting too because the liimit screw needed to be adjusted, ie fd going too far over to the inside, so limit screw limits its movement to a given point--just saying that it doesnt matter what shifting system you have that you can have this happen. A properly adjusted fd and throw in a chain catcher thingee and my experience with my tiagra fd brifted bike shows that I have never ever had a chain go off on the inside of nearly 6 years of shifting, lots and lots of shifting to the inner ring.

I suspect I have been spoiled by the 9 speed Tiagra fd, as it has been flawless in operation. I have changed cables on it a few times and just followed the instructions of setup when putting on a new cable, and it has been exemplary in its working, I find the trim system works fantastically for when in the mid ring.

Granted, the one thing with sti brifters is the "klunky" noisey aspect compared to friction fd shifting. I certainly noticed that when I began riding with sti, but am so used to it now that I dont think about it. My wifes Sora 9 spd setup doesnt seem to be as easy to setup as the Tiagra, but once I got it sorted, its been working flawlessly as well. I suspect its a slight design diff, so from what I have read on this forum, the tiagra fd is an especially good design that has easy setup and reliable use. When I changed my 30 granny to the 26, I didnt have to touch the fd at all, it just works as well as with the 30. I suspect it would be the same with a 24, but a 15t jump is too much from my experience--Ive ridden a lot with a 16t jump from 24 to 40, its doable if really needed, but not ideal for general riding--now if only we could go lower than a 39 or 38, but we cant.

staehpj1

I have had zero issues with front brifters and triples with lower gearing. Granted bikes often come with 110/74 bcd or similar that limit the middle rings a bit on the high side, but I have swapped cranks and found the shifting was still fine with a 46-36-24. I have not gone lower (or wanted to), but I bet you could and still have decent shifting. The little half click positions were adequate for trimming. Granted I kind of don't see the point of indexing in the front, but I have not found it to be a real problem either.

BTW, if you go with lower gearing across all three rings you may benefit from adjusting the FD lower. I think some folks complaint of poor shifting with small rings is because they didn't get that adjustment right.

fietsbob

you can make extra $ removing and reSelling the Brifters. if you dont like them.

Shimano's right indexed bar end shifter has that friction option, for when the clicks dont click right.

djb

yes, thats a given of setting up the fd at the right height, with the mm or 2 of clearance over the big ring, and of course, being aligned properly fore/aft. Then its just following the standard procedure of putting the cable in and tensioning it by hand before tightening the bolt that holds it on, then doing fine tuning-and making sure all the adjustment turnee thingees are fully back in place, the one on the shifters, or frame, or both. Then checking the limits of movements via the limit screws.

as I said, from what I gather, diff fd have diff shapes and whatnot and so can be more finicky with setup, but Ive set up different fd's a number of times and starting from scratch and going through the steps generally works without issues (and of course, gunged up housings and cables, and or gunged up derailleur pivot points and or gunged up shifters can all play a part in all of this and can muck up the process, leading to frustration.)

LeeG

A show stopper is a bike that doesn't fit. If you are looking at a used bike where you need to replace major groups, wheels and drivetrain you might as well buy a new bike.

pacificaslim

Fwiw, a "show stopper," is a good thing! Perhaps OP means something more like "deal breaker," and if so, no, brifters aren't a deal breaker: they are a normal part of life to me. It's 2015.