I’m famous! Or at least my Spa Audax is …

[pete75]

As somebody who has never owned a set of STIs and has no intention of owning a set, I heartily applaud Samuel for sticking to his guns and using downtube levers. I think its absurd that people will splash out on gear shifters but penny-pinch over a set of handbuilt wheels. However, many people these days have never ridden with anything other than STIs, they don't know how to use anything else, and there are wild stories of how dangerous it is to move your hand for a second to change gear. So making bikes with downtube levers isn't a way to make a living, and the same can be said for steel forks and rim braked bikes.....the market has "moved on". In my opinion theres nothing wrong with rim brakes and steel forks, but if you want to make a living you have to sell what people want to buy, and for the mainstream (that's most of the people, most of the time) what they want is disc brakes and carbon forks. Rim brakes and steel forks are a side note to history and fringe places like this forum.
(I have 4 bikes with rim brakes and steel forks, and just one with disc brakes and carbon forks. )

To be fair STIs are great, I'd always used DT levers up until recently but for anything other than plodding around they're a pain in the back side. I'm with you on some of the other modern stuff not being worth the hassle but I think STIs were a bit of a game changer.

I had one bike with STIs. Hated them especially the flippy, flappy brake levers. Ending up changing to Chorus Ergo - vastly superior though I guess it's all a matter of personal choice. Touring bikes I use barcons.

Agree with Colin about rim brakes. What does make discs seem better is hydraulic operation. My son's VSF tourer uses Magura hydraulic rim brakes. I'd be surprised if any disc braked bike stops any quicker.

[fatboy]

I have recently reverted to down tube shifters for my commuting tourer and I really like them. They are simple and seem to stop me needlessly changing gear. I'm probably going to downgrade another of my bikes (mix of downtube and bar end - I've got off ones knocking about!) but I expect my best bikes to stick with STI (it's what they've got) but if I was starting from scratch who knows

[fastpedaller]

I may be totally wrong of course (ready to be corrected) as I've not ridden a bike with disc brakes. It appears to me that the biggest difference between rim or disc brakes is the likelihood of locking up the wheel. To an experienced rider who has a feel for rim brakes this isn't a danger, but someone who is new to cycling could lack the skill - I suspect (because of the physical features of small disc/ large wheel) that it's impossible to lock a disc braked front wheel on a dry surface? There are a lot of other factors to consider when comparing disc to rim brakes:-
1) weight
2) fork stiffness
3) cost
4) wet-weather braking
5) rim wear
6\) fashion

[Samuel D]

With indexed shifting, changing gear takes less than a second wherever you put the shifter.

Meanwhile, you’re pedalling in a gear that is at worst one out, if it’s out at all – often we’re guessing, safe in the knowledge that being slightly wrong has a negligible cost. You have to be two or three gears out before things get bad, though not bad enough to prevent people doing Paris–Brest–Paris on a fixed-gear.

Trying to cut shift delay by some portion of a second – at a cost of complexity, maintenance effort, brake-lever choice, future compatibility, hard currency, etc. – seems to me unworthy of the industry effort it receives. It’s in gear that the business gets done.

Half my riding with this bike has been in big groups with no noticeable problems. The effort of shifting is comparable to reaching for the coffee cup beside my keyboard now. I can’t call that privation with a straight face. I’ve done it many times in the last ten minutes without noticing until I had this thought.

All that to say I haven’t regretted going from STIs to down-tube shifters for a moment. It’s a pure pleasure to ride and work on this bike. I was reminded of that all the more when working on a Shimano FD-5801 with STI (indexed front) shifting last week. What a heap of nonsense. There were more levers and pivots than Heath Robinson imagined, all miniscule and buried in road filth. And for what? The owner had already been to two bike shops with the problems. They probably didn’t have time to clean everything and work through the long adjustment routine in these busy days. You even have to tie a bow in the cable when you’re done.

[Brucey]

only yesterday I was resuscitating an old shimano FD, a 1055 model



it was 'on the cusp' even for the most determined fettler, seized solid. The chamber that the limit screws poke into was almost completely full of dirt and once the mech started to move at all, the lower allen bolt turned with the parallelogram arm. I eventually prevailed but it was a close-run thing. Anyway I mention this because as I struggled, I was thinking of FD-5801 and its ilk and how they might (not) survive similar treatment.



FD-5801 (right) was only introduced after it became clear that the inherently simpler FD-5800 (left) wasn't doing it on many modern framesets. Funny cable runs and finicky 11s tolerances meant that indexed front shifting didn't work properly with FD-5800. Quelle surprise.....

So the solution to this problem -which shimano only managed to create in the first place by dint of making things more complicated than they needed to be- was (drum roll) , yes you guessed it, yet more complexity. It is clever stuff but as Samuel says the chances of the highly complex mechanism working for long despite regular showers of crud seem vanishingly small to me too.

cheers

[fatboy]

All that to say I haven’t regretted going from STIs to down-tube shifters for a moment. It’s a pure pleasure to ride and work on this bike. I was reminded of that all the more when working on a Shimano FD-5801 with STI (indexed front) shifting last week. What a heap of nonsense. There were more levers and pivots than Heath Robinson imagined, all miniscule and buried in road filth. And for what? The owner had already been to two bike shops with the problems. They probably didn’t have time to clean everything and work through the long adjustment routine in these busy days. You even have to tie a bow in the cable when you’re done.

A couple of months back I was asked to sort out front shifting on 11s Shimano to say that it was complex and fiddly was an understatement - I had to download the instruction manual (it's all changed!).

Samuel l also like the old school brake levers (I've done the same with my Tourer but for cantis with the idea that it'll be easier to fix and service not being under bar tape).

Another part of the review that I like is the mention of 72.5 degree seat angle. That's the precise reason for me choosing the Spa Audax frame (hated 74 degrees).

[Samuel D]

A couple of months back I was asked to sort out front shifting on 11s Shimano to say that it was complex and fiddly was an understatement - I had to download the instruction manual (it's all changed!).

Tell me about it!

Here is someone’s attempt at describing how the new-style Shimano front derailleurs work:

https://imgur.com/a/O4PBAqU

(Try opening the animated GIFs – actually video files – in their own tab/window to get them to play at a slower rate.)

As I understand it, the high-limit screw is not a limit screw but affects where the cage is at a given cable tension (tension is an awkward word for this, but you know what I mean: how much cable is fed through the clamp). So the cage position is a product of both cable tension and the high-limit screw position.

The low-limit screw is a normal travel-limit screw.

This is exactly the sort of byzantine mechanism I sought to avoid in my bicycle.

Samuel l also like the old school brake levers (I've done the same with my Tourer but for cantis with the idea that it'll be easier to fix and service not being under bar tape).

Exactly. I like the separation of bar tape from cable housing.

[531colin]

Its so long since I worked on (somebody else's) bike with STIs that I had forgotten the lunacy that is front indexing.
What is it for? Even if you have 3 chainrings (deeply unfashionable!) then that's one in the middle of the lever travel, and one at each end. Hardly difficult, but the poor darlings can't cope with 3 chainrings, they have to have 2 or even one. Then even with 2 chainrings they have to be "indexed"...(really? either you're in one of them, or you're in the other!) ….so that takes you inexorably to "trim clicks"....try explaining trim clicks to somebody with no mechanical sympathy!

[Brucey]

Its so long since I worked on (somebody else's) bike with STIs that I had forgotten the lunacy that is front indexing.
What is it for? …...

It is a 'Douglas Adams Job' …?

I think it was he (and I paraphrase) who described some new gadget or other as being "so complicated and baffling in operation that the little glow of satisfaction you got from ever making it work at all would blind you to the essential pointlessness of it".

Trim clicks would almost make sense if they were always implemented in the same fashion. But they are not.

cheers

[Sweep]

Must say i like the trim-clickable flatbar shifters i have put on 2 builds. Solves the issues you can have with triples/my possible cackhanded mechanical skills. I can drop straight down or up without removing my hands from the bars. Still have some hearing so if i encounter a front mech chain rattle, one click and it stops. Not saying downtubes are bad, each to their own, but i like trimmable shifters. Have the idea that they are longer current, at least from mr S.

[Trigger]

I don't know then, but I don't really recognise any of these problems with my STIs (simple Claris 8 speeds) they just work and didn't take any more setting up than a regular shifter/derailleur interface. I don't get all the whinge with front shifting, I suppose it's ever so slightly more finicky than friction shifting the front, but by an amount so small I can't even bother to describe it- I push the lever and the front shifts, if I get down to the end of the cassette I push it once more for the trim, likewise when coming back up the cassette, although on mine if I get so far back up the cassette that the front needs trimming then it's already time to be dropping down to the inner ring anyway so I never do that trim.

Honestly, you'd think we were discussing the space shuttle or something

[Brucey]

8s double with standard parts and configuration is about the easiest thing to set up.

If you use matched sets of bits (at the recommended chainline, chainstay included angle, seat tube dia, cable pull orientation, and with chainring intervals etc) then even 8s/9s triple setups can usually be made to work without too much difficulty.

But... not everyone wants that, and if you have tried to use a slightly non-standard arrangement in (say) a triple setup, you might start to look forward to a spot of space-shuttle engineering as a relaxing diversion....

For years the setup most commonly wanted (by UK tourists) is a dropped bar setup with a triple chainset, using a road chainline, smallish chainrings (for low overall gearing) and a wide range cassette at the rear. No washing lines (they interfere with a bar bag) and a brake cable pull that works with touring-friendly brakes. There, I can express something that simple in two sentences but in forty years Shimano haven't ever managed to offer this combination and indeed still don't. Maybe they just don't 'get it' or something. The closest you can get off the shelf right now is the GRX 2x10 or 2 x11 groupset. It still doesn't quite use a road chainline (close, but no cigar) no triple front option as standard etc etc. Tiagra 3x10 is another possibility but the with a 30T smallest chainring (and you can't fit smaller to the tiagra chainset) that is still no good; you would want to use GRX mech at the back for larger sprockets of course. Both GRX and Tiagra give you limited choice of brakes that are suitable for touring.

Gawd knows how many tens of thousands of hours and words have been spent trying to engineer a suitable touring bike gearing system using various parts that have been cobbled together......

So in the faint hope that someone at shimano might read this, how about

- STIs with adjustable brake lever MA so that they can work with more than one type of brake?
- STIs with the left shifter having a simple microratchet?
- a 'road triple' chainset (with adjustable chainline) which will accept small chainrings?
- FD design which will work using tight chainlines without difficulty, and uses simple packing/spacers in the mounting to allow perfect function at wider chainlines?
- as an alternative to STIs, gear levers of a simple versatile design that can be mounted in a lot of different places using simple brackets.

The above kit is motivated by needs for touring. However if it is done in the right way it should be versatile enough for many other purposes too.

cheers

[Samuel D]

Not saying downtubes are bad, each to their own, but i like trimmable shifters.

Fair enough. The way I see it, friction shifting gives me infinite trim. But it does need a little more care to trim, perhaps.

I don't know then, but I don't really recognise any of these problems with my STIs (simple Claris 8 speeds) they just work […]

I don’t deny they work if properly set up, merely that in doing so they incur downsides that matter to me. But it’s the new front derailleurs that bother me. Your set-up is old tech and easy by comparison.

I end up working on a fair few bikes for one reason or another. I don’t believe I’ve received a road bike that had the indexed front shifting set up exactly as Shimano specifies, even if the owner was happy enough. They’re just not working as intended in the real world.

And it’s easy to see why. You can’t glance at an FD-5801 or FD-R8000 and understand how it works. The numerous levers and pivots are tiny and hidden in layers, and I don’t just mean road grunge. Even when you’ve approximately figured out the mechanism, you’re left wondering about its purpose. Merely the plastic cap has defeated people. If the owner has already broken the cap trying to remove it (pretty common) or you remove it, underneath you’ll see the cable cut very short and bent into a tight loop (the bow I joked about earlier). The upshot of this is that the cable is kinked and unravelling by the time I arrive on the scene. That makes it hard to let out a bit of cable if the bike was initially set up with too much tension – easy to do if you don’t know how the contraption works. There’s a weird floppy bit with white alignment marks, and until you figure out how that works, you can’t even get an Allen key on the cable clamp bolt because the seat tube interferes.

Modern front derailleurs often need bump stops glued to the frame in just the right place too.

I’m not saying it’s rocket science but that every additional complexity results in a greater gap between the designer’s intention and the performance in the world I inhabit. Most people don’t know how to work on bikes but try anyway, sometimes for a salary. In that world, these fancy derailleurs have short, miserable lives. No wonder people are turning to electric shifting for salvation.

[JakobW]

Nice bicycle, Samuel! Clearly a lot of thought has gone into selecting and assembling the bits. Do you have any photos of it in winter rig with the mudguards on?

--- (drifting OT) ---
I fear that PH is right about the direction of travel with regards to the rim-braked audax bike, if only because gravel bikes offer the bigger tyres and mudguard clearances that were a large part of the audax bike's appeal. If Thorn (Thorn!) have gone for disc forks, what other OTP frames are there? (And has Robin Thorn commented on the design - was it a Damascene conversion, or a grudging response to the market?) I suppose there are CX frames that might fit the bill - Cross-Checks and the like - but they're usually canti-braked rather than using deep-drop calipers (and I note Shimano seem to have retired the CX70 group).

For years the setup most commonly wanted (by UK tourists) is a dropped bar setup with a triple chainset, using a road chainline, smallish chainrings (for low overall gearing) and a wide range cassette at the rear. No washing lines (they interfere with a bar bag) and a brake cable pull that works with touring-friendly brakes. There, I can express something that simple in two sentences but in forty years Shimano haven't ever managed to offer this combination and indeed still don't. Maybe they just don't 'get it' or something. The closest you can get off the shelf right now is the GRX 2x10 or 2 x11 groupset. It still doesn't quite use a road chainline (close, but no cigar) no triple front option as standard etc etc. Tiagra 3x10 is another possibility but the with a 30T smallest chainring (and you can't fit smaller to the tiagra chainset) that is still no good; you would want to use GRX mech at the back for larger sprockets of course. Both GRX and Tiagra give you limited choice of brakes that are suitable for touring.

Relatedly - if you wanted to build decent-quality 3x8 or 3x9 touring transmission with DT/bar-end shifters (no worrying about STIs makes brake selection easier), could you still do that without having to trawl eBay etc. for second-hand/NOS parts?

[PH]

Relatedly - if you wanted to build decent-quality 3x8 or 3x9 touring transmission with DT/bar-end shifters (no worrying about STIs makes brake selection easier), could you still do that without having to trawl eBay etc. for second-hand/NOS parts?

My limited experience of Misroshift (Rear mech and a couple of cassettes) is that it's of reasonable quality. I've read some criticism of the bar end shifters, but the Shimano version still seem to be readily available.
https://www.microshift.com/en/product-category/road/r9/