Flat bars to Drops

[Brucey]

one I know of that is quite good is FD-1057; this is designed to work on a 10T interval with a 52T big ring; it exists in braze-on form as well as band-on form. There are others of similar ilk too.



BTW I am making the assumption that you have a bottom pull cable route and that a bottom swing front mech will fit without interfering with the bottle bosses....

cheers

[gloomyandy]

Thanks for that Brucey. Yes Bottom pull and both bottom swing and top swing seem to work fine (The original is top swing, but I have also used a bottom swing XR mech on this bike as well when experimenting with reduced spring tension).

[markfh]

As I see it for the front derailleur you have a choice of either trying to match the design spacing of the middle and outer chainrings or the getting close to the curvature of the outer chainring. The current crop of 8/9/10 speed (Claris/Sora/Tiagra) Shimano front derailleurs for triples are all designed to work with chainsets with 50/39/30 chainrings, i.e. with an 11T difference between the outer and middle chainrings whereas your current chainset has 48/38/28 chainrings, i.e. a 10T difference. There is a chance that if you set up a road front derailleur at the normally specified height above the outer chainring the inner plate of the cage will foul the middle chainring. The way around this is to raise the front derailleur, probably by only a couple of mm, sufficient to clear the middle chainring although as Brucey notes this may make the bike more likely to shed its chain when shifting to the outer chainring.

How much you can move the front derailleur out by using an eccentric shim depends on what the diameter of the seat tube is. The standard diameters catered for by Shimano front derailleurs are 28.6, 31.8 and 34.9mm. The chainline for the Claris, Sora and Tiagra triple chainsets is specified as 43.5mm whereas the chainline for a M361 triple is specified as 50.0mm with a 122/123mm square taper bottom bracket. If you can not move the road front derailleur far enough out using either an eccentric shim or a combination of braze-on adaptor and BO FD as noted by Brucey then it may be possible, depending on the clearance between the current chainset/chainrings/cranks and the frame, to reduce the chainline of the M361 chainset by using a shorter square taper bottom bracket.

[gloomyandy]

Quick update...

I got hold of a set of STI Shifters from a clubmate for free (well I actually mode a donation to his charity ride), these are Sora 3300 models. First the good news. I've been using a Sora R3030 front mech and the existing Deore rear mech I get very good shifting front and rear, with careful setting up of the front mech I get virtually no chain rub in any combination other then small/small (which won't be used anyway). I'm tempted to use a nine speed chain (which I think will work fine with 8 speed chainset and cassette) as I think that will make it less critical on setup. Will probably give this a try when I next replace the chain.

The not so good news is on the brake front. I was expecting the existing V brakes to be poor (and they were!), so I go a set of mini-V brakes from Spa. I was in two minds about using either Tektro RX5 or RX6 brakes and had decided to go with RX5 due to potential cable pull issues with the 3300 shifters (which I think are SSLR rather than NSSLR). Unfortunately Spa didn't have any RX5s in stock and I was persuaded that RX6 would be fine. Well they sort of work but have to be adjusted to be very close to the rim. I'm not sure how liveable with they will be so will see how my partner gets on with them. I think the RX5 would have been the better option, though they would have been very tight to the mudguards (which I could probably drop a little).

Other than the brake issue (which may or may not work out), I'm pretty pleased with things. I think if I'd been able to get hold of a more up to date shifter (with NSSLR cable pull) things would have been very good, so I may keep an eye out for one of those! Failing that if my partner can't live with the brakes I may go the RX5 route.

[Brucey]

one dodge that can improve matters very slightly in some cases is to file a little groove in the caliper arm with the pinch bolt and fit the cable below a horizontal pinch bolt instead of above it. This seems all wrong at first, to have wonky V brakes, but since cane creek sell a brake of this sort (that is wonky by design) maybe it is OK.

Similarly if the brake blocks can be mounted higher up in the slots (which will vary with how the bosses are put on the frame) this will improve things too; one way of getting an extra mm or so is to file the dropouts so the wheel comes up a bit more. But either way it is a lot of work for very little gain.

One thing to check is that the levers are not set too close to the bar, either by virtue of their exact position on anatomical bars, or because they have reach adjuster shims in them.

The last set of SSLR levers paired with Mini-Vs I fitted was on a Moulton, and I was sure that there was no way it would work on a bike with larger wheels, because avoiding brake rub would have been impossible. The brakes were good and strong though!

Perhaps controversially, in your situation I might fit cantilever brakes if I had a set kicking around and they would fit OK.

The path of least resistance is to fit travel agents though.

Ho hum.

cheers