Trakhak

I was joking. There are at least 10 non-interchangeable 26" tire sizes; e.g., 26 x 1.75 and 26 x 1 3/4 are not interchangeable.

cyccommute 

Interrupter brakes are different from mountain bike levers. They may look like mountain bike levers but they function differently. The pull ratio is for a short pull brake rather than a long pull brake that is most common on mountain bikes. They split the brake cable housing and work by pushing on the housing during braking. Mountain and road levers pull on the inner cable while keeping the housing still.

Different issue.

Versatility is nice but specialization has it’s place. A road bike is generally built for going fast on smooth surfaces. A mountain bike is built for going fast on very unsmooth surfaces. Put one on the other’s surface and it doesn’t do what it is designed to do very well...particularly the fast part but neither is all that comfortable to ride on the other’s surface. Trying to make a bike that is versatile enough to ride on pavement and on rocks ends up with a bike that is frustrating to ride on both. It won’t go that fast on the road and it doesn’t handle technical terrain all that well. Its versatility is not limited but its function is.

cyccommute 

Thank you, Captain Esoteric. Shall we talk of angels and pinheads now?

walnutz

I know you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but you can do this now

indyfabz

walnutz

crud, did I miss something?

smashndash

This seems to be a pattern. Disc brakes, tubeless, wide rims, wide tires, 650b, 1x, 31.8 bars and thru-axles have all been lifted from MTB.

I can almost guarantee you that within 5 years, we will see 1.5” steerers, 110/148 boost spacing and 35mm handlebars on gravel/road bikes.

I still don’t understand why anyone would expect road bars and mtb bars to have the same diameter, for all the reasons stated by others. What is the use case?

smashndash

I don’t see how this is relevant to the thread. The thread is discussing using road shifters/brake levers on flat bars and trigger shifters on drop bars, which I have never seen done before.

cyccommute 

I have seen it but it doesn’t work all that well. The flat part of a road bar is generally too small for the length of even a small set of mountain bike brake levers to fit...the barrel adjusters run into each other, much less put a set of shifters in there too. There are several other issues as well. You can’t brake from the drops nor is there anything to hold onto on the hoods so you are even more limited in hand positions than with flat bars. The brake levers are also very, very close together which would cause the rider to ride with squeezed in arms and, likely, hunched back. Not terribly comfortable.

Road brake levers work a bit better on flat bars but the brake routing is funky. If you are trying to use aero levers, the brake cable makes a very tight turn at the bar (or just flaps around to catch on everything. You could use a integrated shifter but, again, the cable routing is funky.

Generally, shift and brake components work best on the bars they were designed for.

cyccommute 

People are constantly questioning my co-op experience. How many bikes have you worked on in the last 10 years? I do one 7 hour shift per week and have for nearly every week since about 2010. My shift is the Saturday shift which is the busiest and for the entire 7 hours, all 6 stands in the work shop are full. We limit the amount of time that people can work on their bikes to 90 minutes. That’s about 30 bikes per day or, roughly, 1500 bikes per year. I have worked on 15,000 bikes in 10 years. You won’t find paid shop mechanic who has worked on that many bikes in a similar period. They aren’t working on 6 bikes at once.

Now granted, most of the bikes we see are older bikes but not all of them are. We see a fair number of newer bikes as well. The vast majority of new bikes are Shimano equipped. Maybe that will change as SRAM grows but that’s the future. I’m talking about past equipment.

I also don’t live in a vacuum. I know the market and check out new bikes on a very regular basis. SRAM is making inroads into Shimano’s market share (50% of the total market) on the high end but Shimano still has most of the market. SRAM has about 35% of the market. I don’t say this with glee. I have bikes with both Shimano and SRAM. I have bikes that are completely Shimano free (it wasn’t that easy to do when I did it). I’d like to see SRAM gain more of the market just to have some innovation. Shimano is kind of stodgy and don’t generally make components cross compatible.

Leinster

But the part of the market where SRAM road and MTB groups are compatible (ie electronic shifting) is tiny, and you haven't acknowledged that, at all.

Miele Man

If a road bike won't take a wide tire then it's probably a dedicated road bike not designed for much more than fast riding on paved surfaces. It's like complaining because you can't put SUV tires on your Ferarri or Lambourghini.

Cheers

Miele Man

Seems like they're only compatible with a lot of tinkering and the use of a special battery and a software change.

Cheers

Phil_gretz

Revo-Shift grip shifters, of course...

Miele Man

I did read it and that's where I saw what all was needed to make them compatible includuing the battery and the software upgrade.

Cheers

cyccommute 

You seem to be really quick to declare victory where it isn’t justified. SRAMs market share is 35% but they have a suspension division that is a very large part of the market share. Shimano owns half the market and doesn’t have a suspension division (thank goodness) so their market share of the component market is much, much larger. SRAM has cut into the component market but Shimano isn’t going to be on the ropes anytime soon. Assuming that half to two thirds of SRAM’s market share is suspension related, that leave 15 to 20% of the component market...giving Shimano 80 to 85% of the component market. And even that portion of the component market is mostly on the mountain bike side. SRAM’s portion of the road component market is diminishingly small.

You seem to be confusing two articles. The one that talks about Shimano clearly says

The blog.3t.bike link only mentioned Shimano in passing and not in very glowing terms.

It might be easier with SRAM...good for them...but that has no bearing on what Shimano does.

And, by the way, just because you can show that one part of Shimano’s electronic systems force road and mountain systems to work together (barely), what about the rest of the Shimano line? Are you saying that just because one system works, the others will too? I’d love it if it were true but it’s not. Electronic shifting is an outlier that really proves nothing.

cyccommute 

With a sweet, sweet Denali 2 piece handle bar? Cool!!!!

cyccommute 

15% of the component market is small by anyone’s measure.

Miele man quoted you and he was clearly talking about the CX magazine article which is about using Shimano parts. Directing him to another article on a different system doesn’t negate what the CX magazine article said. For Shimano, a battery and software change is needed. It doesn’t matter to the discussion of the Shimano system if SRAM system works together better.


Just moving them back to where they were before you shot them into space.

Let me fix that for you. I’ve admitted to being wrong about SRAM. But Shimano road and mountain systems don’t work together with one esoteric exception that may fall apart at the next software upgrade. Cable actuated Shimano systems are incompatible between the different disciplines. And, as most people are going to be dealing with cable system, that is most relevant to the discussion.