As some of you already know, I am a sucker for flashy new technology.  Not!  Actually, technology impresses me when it makes sense.  

    In the bicycle world, Shimano introduced the combination of a slant parallelogram rear deraileur coupled to the hyperglide freewheel in the mid 1980’s.  Shifting became much surer and crisper.  This new technology paved the way for the introduction of Shimano Index Shifting; or SIS.

    As it happened, I bought a Schwinn Circuit in 1986, just months before click shifting became ubiquitous.  My new bicycle employed a shifting system that almost immediately became archaic and I was bummed.  It wasn’t until 2001 that I bought another bicycle and this one, a Bianchi, came with Campagnolo Ergo.  I was not impressed and converted back to friction shifting.

    This past week, I set up a bicycle for a customer who wants Shimano Down Tube Shifters.  When I put them on the bike and adjusted the deraileurs, I was impressed.  The shifting is crisp and precise.  They don’t clutter up the handlebars with cables.  They are fairly attractive on the down tube.  And they are much less expensive than brake lever shifters.

     But here is the big selling point as far as I am concerned.  On my Yellow Roadie, I use friction down tube shifters mated to Dura Ace 7700 deraileurs and hubs.  For a cassette, I use a custom seven speed.  (This is really an eight speed cassette with a spacer instead of the eighth cog.)  The biggest drawback to this system is that on climbs, the frame flexes and tugs, bit by bit, on the shifter cables until the deraileurs try to auto shift.  The SIS (Shimano Index Shifting) right shifter should prevent this from happening on the rear deraileur, but the left shifter is even tricker.

    I am not sure why the springs are so stiff on the Dura Ace deraileurs, but they are stiffer than the springs on my Chorus deraileurs and the spring on the front Dura Ace deraileur is very stiff indeed.  For this reason, auto shifting is a bigger issue on the Dura Ace Roadie than on my Chorus Randonneuse.

    When I put the shifters on Ralf’s bicycle, the right one went right on, but the left one was weird.  If I put the base on the way I thought it should go on, the shifter ended up pointing down.  This seemed wrong, but I couldn’t figure any other way to do it.  So I looked at the instructions.  (By the way, if you are a home mechanic, the component makers have lots of instructions on the Internet now.)  The instructions said that the shifter should be pointing down.   When you swing it around to its correct position, you end up pushing against a spring.  

    Ha!  That means that when you shift the front deraileur to the the big ring, the stiff deraileur spring is pulling against the friction of the shifter and against a spring in the shifter.  The tendency to auto shift is neutralized.  (By the way, click shifting on the front deraileur isn’t practical since you sometimes need to trim that deraileur when you are on the inside or outside cog on the cassette.

    There is another neat trick in these shifters and it is a trick shared with the bar end shifters.  If a cable should slip or something should happen where the index shifting gets out of index while you are on a ride and you don’t want to stop and adjust it -- an easy enough task -- you can shift the right shifter into friction mode and make your adjustments at a more convenient time.  Getting out of adjustment shouldn’t be an issue, but a quick fix is there if you need it.

    Shimano has kept these shifters all along and you can buy them for the newest ten speed drive train.  We set Ralf’s bike up as a nine speed and had no trouble getting nine speed shifters, but they will probably slowly disappear.

    Now, to my Yellow Roadie.  The eight speed shifters are obsolete, but there are still plenty of new old stock ones around.  I think I could put them on my bicycle and just use the first seven clicks (actually, the first six clicks since the small cog doesn’t need a click).  If this doesn’t work, I guess I could take that spacer out and add an eighth cog.  It’s just that I don’t know what I would add since I have everything I want with seven.  In any case, auto shifting, the only thing I don’t like about friction shifting, would be a thing of the deep, dark, manual past.  I think am about to, once again, embrace the new technology.