crandress 

Hello all. I have never gone beyond 7-speeds on my road bikes, but was looking at a mid 90's frame that is spaced at 130mm and thinking about going 10- or 11-speed. Do I need to go indexed/STI or can I still use friction downtube or bar-end shifters? I can't think of a reason it would not work, but thought I would check before moving forward. If not, what is the max for friction? 9-speed? Or is there anything else to consider?

Thanks in advance! Chris

brian3069

I've never tried it, but it seems trimming the gears may be an issue with most friction shifters. Rivendell has DT friction shifters designed for 9/10 speeds.

https://www.rivbike.com/collections/...ter-kits-17101

52telecaster

I had a masi that was 10 speed 105 and came with friction bar ends. It worked fine. I like 8 speed better.

Classtime 

I've gone 8 speed friction and I felt it was a little too sensitive. While it would shift smoothly with a matching chain and cassette, it often took more than one reach for the shifter to get it to run quietly. A 7 speed cassette with a spacer (4mm?) works much better. For me, more than 7 speeds requires indexed shifting.

belacqua

cyclotoine

that seems odd as the cog spacing for 7 and 8 is the same, in general.

jimmuller 

I have 8 speeds with DT friction shifting on my Tommasini, 130mm rear. Picking any single gear can be interesting, and I am so not used to it that I often lose track of what gear I am in. But they are so close together that if I miss one it doesn't matter. .

Choke 

I have one bike with 10sp friction shifting and it works great IMO.

Dfrost 

cyclotoine

Point taken. Precisely different, but functionally the same. Shimano 7 and 8 are generally interchangeable (i.e. 7-speed shifter happily shifts 7 out of 8 cogs and an 8-speed shifter will happily shift on a 7 when limited) and I am skeptical that if an individual is happily friction shifting 7 speed that 8 speed feels fussier. I mean really you can feel 0.2 mm difference and can't get used to it? The indexed components don't seem to notice.

52telecaster

+1
i ride almost every day with 8 speed and friction bar ends. works like a dream.

rccardr 

CliffordK

I put 11 speed friction bar end shifters on my Jamis Coda build.

It shifts just fine. However, a couple of notes.

I put an M8000 SGS rear derailleur on the bike. It takes a little more cable pull than other derailleurs. This became a problem for the shift levers.

I originally had a set of old Suntour shfiters on it, and they only had enough range for about 8 or 9 sprockets.

I changed to a similar vintage Shimano shifter. It could barely do the whole range on the derailleur. However, it is spring loaded, and I have to over-shift on the small sprocket end, which gives too much spring tension and it likes to spring back.

I'll probably end up filing or grinding the shifter mount on either the Shimano or Suntour shifters, or perhaps both, to increase the range of movement of the lever.

The other note, the MTB rear derailleur didn't come with an inline cable adjustment, so adjusting the cable had to be with the cable nut, which was tricky due to the wide range.

I do 9s shifting with my vintage Campy (bumpy style) shift levers, and an Ultegra 6500 RD. It takes the full tube to tube range of the shift lever. A 10s cassette is about the same width, and probably would work, but 11s may be too wide for that configuration.

seely

It works, but with anything over 9spd I find index shifting far preferable. I have one bike setup 2x10 with bar end shifters, and it stays in indexed mode. I've found with friction shifting, you have to be spot-on with your trim adjustment, there's no room for error. My other setup is 8spd and stays in friction mode, and I never have to fiddle with it -- shifting it for me is now basically like index shifting, though the index is my muscle memory.

verktyg 

So much for humor...

1.5mm to 2mm of lateral side float in the upper pulley allows the chain to self center on the FW sprocket. That's the reason successful indexing derailleur designs work.

Campagnolo fought this reality with their Rube Goldberg Sycnchro non-indexing levers they introduced in 1987. Two years and 3 versions latter they finally gave up and adopted Shimano's indexing technology.

With some styles of derailleurs it easy to modify the top pulleys so that they float side to side.

Here's a Simplex SX610 that I modified a number of years back to index shift an 11-28t 8 speed cassette. I had to file down the inner travel stop so the the derailleur would cover the width of the cassette.



I played around with several different shift levers to get a barrel with enough wrap to handle the 8 speed cassette. Most were too small and I had to pull the lever all the way back to parallel with the down tube to get onto the largest sprocket.

I put these Sachs-Huret Rival 8 speed levers on and they friction shifted great out of the box. For kicks, I switched over to indexing and it worked perfectly first try. The design is a dead nuts knockoff of Shimano SIS levers.



Going the other way, indexing rear derailleurs work great with friction levers if the barrel is large enough to wrap up the cable. They pretty much eliminate having to trim after shifting.

I have this Campy Mirage 9 Speed RD on my mixed vintage 1990 Bianchi Mondiale. The levers are Campy Doppler retrofriction. Shifting is even smoother than indexing because there are no detents.





verktyg

crandress 

Wow! Thank you for all the responses. What a diverse set of opinions that is! Certainly can't hurt to try. I can always change the shifters.

ThermionicScott 

RobbieTunes

^^^
That is good news.

No one mentioned piggy-back shifters, but often, the travel of the lever throw is limited with those. Many of the piggy-back mounts only accommodate a smaller-diameter friction shifter, which = less cable pull over the arc of the lever throw. Keep this in mind when trying to set them up for more cable pull than intended................Do not ask me how I know this.

I have run Shimano 600EX (friction) shifters that came with 2x6 on 9-speed wheels. Took some getting used to, but just barely pilled enough cable.

I have also used Sunrace 9-sp downtube shifters, which are index-only, with a variety of Shimano 9-sp components. They are large and thunky but work well.

My recommendation, if you plan to go 9-sp or 10-sp, is to go ahead and get indexed (since your cassette is) and run DA 7700 or 7800 downtube indexed shifters. The simplicity and ease of those shifters is hard to undermine. You buy the shifters and the RD, and can grab several gears at once in any direction, and the L shifter is friction. A little tough if you're using a claw RD, but otherwise not that big a deal.

John E

SRAM PC-58 chain with 8-speed Shimano cassette on my mountain bike, with SunTour XC derailleur and 7-speed SunTour thumb shifter in friction mode -- works like a champ.

squirtdad

Another thing to note is that mondern ramped cogs make friction shifting really smooth, at least with the 8 speed with thumb shifter 1x8 set up i run on one bike

Honestly though, at 9 speed and above I don't know why any one would not want indexed shifting. It works great (maybe with a little tweeking initially) and make shifting a no think thing.

I really noticed it when i broke some spokes and went from commuting on my torpado (6 speed campy friction) to my Miyata (shimano 9 speed sti, brifters, 3x9)

ymmv

jamesdak 

Well, I'm friction shifting an "odd" setup on my old mid 80s Orbea Cabestany. I'm using the original Simplex DT 5 speed shifters to do this too. The RD is an Ultegra 9 speed model while the rear wheel and cassette is a Campagnolo setup. For whatever reason it works great and seems to be my most precise DT friction setup of all my bikes. It is super easy to hit the next gear and I hardly even have to trim with this setup. I suspect a lot of that is because of the floating jockey pulley on the Shimano RD as T-Mar suggested in another post. All I know is it works great.

crandress 

Will I like the classic look and don't really want brifters. I have never actually tried them, but like the eased of maintenance of friction parts. I was just thinking a current shifting setup might be nice. I do have the Dia Compe ENE bar end shifters I got in a trade, but not the 11-speed. Supposedly will do 10-speed, but maybe I just stick to 9 and it all works better. Now triple front or compact double, decisions! Not sure if the guy still has the frame I was considering, but that does not mean another won't come along.

3speedslow

RobbieTunes

Friction shifting is one thing. Friction braking is another.

From what some serious mechanics tell me, some day the braking will be magnetic.

jimmuller 

This thread has been dormant for a few days but I thought about it while riding to work yesterday. I was on the Tommasini which is set up with 2x8 gearing.

This bike has an "issue" that none of my 6- or 5-speeds have, chain line. With two more sprockets the smallest and largest are one spacing further off center compared to a 6-sprocket FW. Now, one might think that's okay since one rarely uses the big-big or little-little combinations. However it moves the sprockets I use the most further inboard.

Most of my commute uses the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest w/big ring of a compact double (48-34T) crank. The Tommasini's 8-speed has the same 28T large sprocket, and the next three are whatever they are. I haven't counted them lately, but whatever they are they are the sprockets that fit the terrain. This means I end up running one click further inboard, and my most-used, slightly low cruising gear has the chain line of the big-big combination on my 6-speeds. I can hear the misalignment of the chain and the teeth. So I end up running the small ring more consistently, with smaller sprockets. It doesn't sound like a problem but in practice it is a big difference in usage pattern. I find myself at odds over which ring to run at any given time. On the 5- and 6-speed bikes that problem doesn't occur.