Front Mech Compatibility

[gxaustin]

Hi, my carbon bike has 2 x 11 speed Ultegra gearing. The cable for the front mech exits the frame almost below the pivot and so for all the length of the arm on the 6800 front mech the actual leverage is very low because the line of action of the cable is very close to the pivot. This makes it quite hard to change to the big ring. I don't fancy redrilling the carbon frame so I was wondering if there was an old style mech with a similar cable pull; since I've heard that the pull from the 11sp shifter is greater than for 10sp, say? I'm not going to change the lever. I'd sooner live with it
Any ideas please?

[Brucey]

if you use the current ultegra FD (FD-R8000 I think)

http://si.shimano.com/pdfs/ev/EV-FD-R8000-4282A.pdf

it will work on a wider variety of frames because it has a completely different type of mechanism that isn't sensitive to the cable pull angle in the same way. I think the 105 version (FD-R7000) is compatible and similar too.

IIRC the FD you have at present is meant to have different cable routings at the pinch bolt, to change the MA/cable pull, but this isn't always sufficient on certain framesets.

cheers