8 speed vs 10 speed friction shifting
 

On my 84 Trek 770 I have the original setup with Campy Record gear. It has friction down tube shifters. I swapped the original rear wheel with a wheel with a campy 10 speed freehub to see how it frction shifted with 10 speeds. Suprisingly the downtube shift levers handle the 10 speed fine although
i have to be fairly precise or I will skip over a gear. I have an 8 speed campy freehub. I am thinking about getting an 8 speed casssette and seeing how the shifting goes with 8 speeds. Thought this forum would be a good one to ask about this, do you think I will have improved friction shifting going from 10 speed to 8 speed ?

Your shifts might be a little more forgiving. I assume if your shifters are from '84 they were intended for a 6 speed cassette with 126mm rear dropout spacing. I'm sure when you engage low gear in your 10 speed set up the lever has to rotate almost 180 degrees - that will be the same with the 8 speed cassette.

I ran friction shifters on my 8 speed cassette for a while and apart from the aforementioned rotation, it was a joy to use.

I’m running an 8-speed cassette with clamp on down tube shifters and everything runs smoothly. The bike came to me with a 10-speed cassette, but the Suntour Blueline rd could only shift 9 of the 10 gears. The shift levers (also Blueline) had room to pull 10 tho.

On my old Orbea with the original Simplex DT shifters I was able to easily and precisely shift all the way up to a Campagnolo 11 speed cassette. These shifters were just a joy to use. Now my setup did have modern cables and housing and the RD was upgraded to a Ultegra 9 speed. The pulley with play on the modern RD may have had something to do with how well it worked.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...385b0130e9.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...284a44685f.jpg
This shows the whole setup.

It wouldn't surprise me if you could get the 10 speed setup working just fine with a little effort.

I'm using Campy big barrel retrofriction levers and they do a great job of shifting a 10sp cassette IMO. They are hard to find though.

One thing that can help is to use some cable housing liner or shrink wrap on the cable to help make the effective diameter of the barrel larger. You can see a piece of cable liner in the pic.

http://hampco.ciocctoo.com/070416d.jpg

The Orbea is a great looking bike ! Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the tip on the cable liners. I will give it a try.

Thanks for the info. I will give 8 speed a go and see how it pans out. Yes it rotates about 180 degrees. I will try the cable liner trick that Choke has shown and it may help in this regard.

I seem to recall from a year or so ago briefly testing some Shimano L-422 Light Action downtube friction shifters with an 8-speed cassette and Shimano 600 Tricolor 8-speed RD. Worked fine if I'm recalling that setup correctly. I know I also used those shifters on another bike with 7-speed freewheel, but that's easy.

I have some Dura Ace 10-speed bar-end shifters, mostly used with aero bars on a TT/tri-bike, but haven't tried the right/rear shifter in friction mode. Seems like it would be very finicky. I have used my Ultegra 8-speed bar-end shifters with an 8-speed cassette setup and nominally 7-speed Deore LX RD, no problem. That rear derailleur doesn't pivot/swing quite far enough to shift reliably into the big cog in index mode with an 8-speed cassette, but will in friction mode.

IME, the only real difference between shifting 10 and 8 speed with friction shifters is the length of travel for the lever. I have a harder time adjusting to the longer travel of 8 peed than I do the shorter travel of 10. Either way, it is just a matter of getting used to it. The only bike I have with DT shifters is set up with a triple front, 50/38/28, and 8 speed rear, 13/27, both friction. That is Shimano 1050 6 speed levers, index or friction, and a Deore long cage RD. I am going to switch the rear to 8 speed index as I already have the shift lever. If I was to go to 9 or 10 speed, I would change to dual control shifters/brakes and probably a compact 50/34 crank set.

Deceptive pics, lol. It was quite rough cosmetically but a fast ride.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...ddba70af5e.jpg

DT Lever Barrel Diameter
 

WOW! I've never seen one of those Campy Big Barrel Dopler shift levers before... Another undocumented Campy product???

The drum diameter of the groove where the cable sits is the critical dimension.

Many standard friction levers have a drum diameter of 16-17mm which works OK with the 5 & 6 speed freewheels they were designed to be used with. Most levers designed for use with 7+ speed FWs and cassettes have around a 22mm drum diameter.

I'm running standard Campy Dopler Retrofriction levers on a number of bikes with index compatible RDs and Shimano 8 speed cassettes. They shift smoother than indexing levers. Little or no trimming! The secret is having an upper pulley with 1.5mm to 2mm of lateral side to side float which allows the chain to self center on the sprocket.

My 1990 Bianchi Mondial with a mishmash of Camp gear. The Dopler lever needs to be pulled back quite a ways to get onto the the largest sprocket.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2617043850.jpg

The appearance is deceiving on these levers because the actual drum diameter where the shift cable rides is a lot smaller than the outer diameter of the lever. They only have slightly more cable wrap than a standard NR/SR lever.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...ea20103ee2.jpg

I experimented with several different shift levers when I was building up my 1984 Gitane Super Corsa. I used a Simplex SX610 rear derailleur because while a little heavy, they're bullet proof.

I had to file down the inner travel stop so that it could cover the width of the Shimano 8 speed 11-28 cassette. I also filed about 1.5mm+ off of the width of the upper pulley to allow some parallel float. I do that on most RDs that I overhaul. It allows the chain to self center on the sprockets.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2279e7aca9.jpg

I first tried Simplex Retrofriction levers. The barrel diameter was too small and didn't have enough wrap so the lever needed to be pulled back 180° to get onto the large sprocket.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e80b47eadb.jpg

Looking through my stash, I found this set of Sachs Huret Rival 8 speed indexing levers.They're Shimano knockoffs and have about a 22mm diameter barrel vs. the 16mm barrel on the Simplex Retrofrictions.

I'd planned on using them in friction mode and they worked well. Then I switched to indexing and BINGO! They index perfectly with my modified Simplex SX610 RD!

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f379be1a57.jpg

When I put together my new Ed Litton frame last year, I wanted to keep with the black and blue theme. Matchy Matchy!

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...bdd97298a3.jpg

I liked the way the black Campy Veloce looked so I modified one by increasing the cage width so that I could use a wider 8 speed chain with a Shimano 8 speed cassette.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2d065f37f7.jpg

Shimano 8 speed indexing levers didn't play nice with the Campy RD even in friction mode so I tried a set of Dia-Compe "Silver" W-SHIFT levers. They have a large diameter drum and they're 8-9-10 speed compatible with a ratchet mechanism similar to the old Suntour Power Shifters but with finer detents for a smoother feel. The down side is that black ring behind the screw is plastic! The work well but don't expect long life out of them!

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...749fc50905.jpg

verktyg :50:

I have all of my bikes set up for friction shift, including my mountain bike's 3x8 setup with the earlier-style SunTour Accushift levers, which provide a true friction mode, unlike the next-generation version. I love friction shift -- heck, I'm the guy who shifted a Sturmey-Archer ACS hub with a Huret friction downtube lever.

I don't know about 'undocumented' but they certainly aren't well known. I think that they only produced them for a couple of years so they are pretty rare but if you look long enough you can find them.

These are all Dopplers so you can get a better idea of the size difference.

http://cycle.ciocctoo.com/retfric.jpg

Nice shifters. I have a pair of those somewhere and I am looking for a real nice first Gen Chorus to pair with them

First Generation Campy Chorus
 

My 1988 Peugeot Chorus 753 with all Campy 1st generation Chorus components including Dopler shift levers. The Chorus RDs shift really well.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...730317f3ff.jpg

I'm running a 7 speed 13-30T FW.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3b242aa177.jpg

They have a unique setting that allows you to adjust the angle of the parallelogram for close or wide pitch FWs.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...fe45176b3e.jpg

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9cdd351e00.jpg