The timeless appeal of 7-speed gearing

[Brucey]

The point that most people miss is that less wheel dish means stronger and/or lighter wheels (and not by a small amount).

Interesting points as ever but while I get stronger (and stiffer?) I don't fully understand why they would be lighter; unless you mean because the freehub would be a bit shorter and that would mean a bit lighter? .....

less dish means you can build using lighter rims for any given duty. The reason for this is that the wheel is (with the same rim) quite a bit stronger when it has less dish on it. Also the durability of the wheel is usually limited by the spoke tension balance; too loose causes one set of problems and too tight causes another. With less dish you have a bigger 'acceptable window' because the tension balance is always more favourable.

cheers

[Jamesh]

Copied from another forum as I was wondering why my 9 speed wasn't working smoothly only to count the original cassette on first ace wheels - 10spd!!

"""" all 10 speed road groupsets (except tiagra 4700) lack of precision SERIOUSLY!! That is the main reason they changed the cable pull and shift ratio on 11sp and 10sp tiagra 4700. I had both ultegra 10sp and 105 10sp and for a week a set of dura ace 10sp. they all lack of precision. they pull litle for litle so everything in the cables has to be perfect. sell the 5700 shifters and deraileur and get yourself a tiagra 4700 series. you will be amazed with the precision you will find there. plus, the tiagra rd-4700 medium cage can go up to 34t large cog just for fun!""""

Is 9 speed the sweet spot for smooth and quick shifter compared to 10 speed??? (apart from new tiagra a detuned version of 11spd apparently) especially as 10spd stuff is 2+ times price if 9 and lower stuff.
Does 10 suck as much as the comment above suggests??
Cheers James

[Brucey]

there are several different possibilities in 9/10s road shimano shifting

a) 9s (all 9s shimano has washing lines)
b) 10s version 1 (washing lines, old shift ratio)
c) 10s version 2 (old shift ratio , underbartape routing)
d) 10s version 3 ( new shift ratio as per 11s, 4700 groupset only in 10s at present, underbartape routing)

In order of preference (for consistent shifting) I reckon it goes

a, b,d,c or possibly a,d,b,c.


a) always comes first because it has cable routing that isn't problematic and uses a decent cable pull per click.

c) comes last because it doesn't.

between b) and d) it is a bit of a toss-up; both are sensitive to cable condition, but for different reasons.

A good 10s setup is to use ST-4700 with a better quality RD (eg an 11s ultegra one) instead of RD-4700. The shifting won't be much different when everything is new, but the ultegra mech should last longer.

cheers

[Bmblbzzz]

there are several different possibilities in 9/10s road shimano shifting

a) 9s (all 9s shimano has washing lines)

Not quite so. Some Sora 9 speed, for instance, does not.

[Brucey]

I should rephrase that as 'originally all shimano 9s had washing lines'.

cheers

[Bmblbzzz]

I've just been wondering when Shimano, or maybe Campag, first adopted "aero" gear cables. Google isn't helping me. Also wondering what logic there might be to Shimano's groupset numbering; why does Sora 3300 come after (is newer than) 3400, for example?

[Brucey]

I've just been wondering when Shimano, or maybe Campag, first adopted "aero" gear cables. Google isn't helping me. Also wondering what logic there might be to Shimano's groupset numbering; why does Sora 3300 come after (is newer than) 3400, for example?

campag ergos had underbartape routing right from the start.

Sora 3400 comes after 3300. Recently shimano have rejigged their road groupsets so they are starting again, with groupsets having 'R' prefixes. Thus in Sora it went 3300, 3400, then 3500, and R3000 is the current version

useful listing here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimano

cheers

[Bmblbzzz]

Yes, it was the 3000 coming after 3500 I was thinking of. I didn't realize they'd appended an R to the numbers - presumably because they were starting to reach the end of four-digit permutations!

[Brucey]

I think what pushed them into it was they had run out of numbers like you say. In Dura Ace they had gone past 7900 (and had already started on a 9000 series), Ultegra was 6870, and 105 had reached 5800. Clean slate had them resetting to R9000, R8000, R7000, R3000 etc. This year revised Tiagra is 'due' because the 4700 groupset is 'old' now.... presumably that will have an R prefix as well.

cheers

[gxaustin]

Shimano 6600 10sp is probably my favourite group set. I had no idea it was poor for gear changing.

[fastpedaller]

I'm astonished how regularly Shimano and others (and it's not just cycling) rename/renumber products 'just because they can', with often no noticeable change - I can only guess this is to 'drum up trade' by having a 'new' product. Reminds me of the sketch Dave Gorman did on tv about 'new improved' washing powder or whatever, and he commented (in jest, but tongue in cheek?) "how bad must it have been if they've improved it 5 times in as many years?"
I sometimes think it's great (for skinflints like me), being able to buy a 'discontinued' item such as a camera at a vastly reduced price, in full belief that 6 months earlier it was 'the bees knees', and the latest one will be the same, discontinued (out of date/fashion?) in another 6 months.
But there is a side to my brain that thinks we are all being taken for a ride (no pun intended) with product 'changes'

[Brucey]

Shimano 6600 10sp is probably my favourite group set. I had no idea it was poor for gear changing.

ST6600 has washing lines doesn't it? That makes it 'not so bad'. The following ST-6700 model had underbartape cable routing and was considerably more finicky.

cheers

[hujev]

In reference to quote below and in explanation of my timidity-

Well, I'm not super old, but old enough that:
a) I've got too many bikes(&trike) so had better not gain any new interests as space is tight,
b) I've gotten used to 5,6,7 speed freewheels so can't really imagine a 'need' for single speed,
c) I'm a little more chicken (or sensible, or whatever) that I would have been at 20 of (the idea of) hopping up on a PF or worse, a 'cropper'!

So mostly it's a matter of 'enough going on'.

The last sort of 'shift' I made was pretty much giving up xc skiing a dozen years or so ago when I 'discovered' snowshoeing (on real wood & leather 'shoes, not those silly little brightly colo(u)red plastic ones they market). Did I mention that I also crash repeatedly while xc skiing, on perfectly level ground? And on snowshoes too for that matter? Sure it's fun, but the crashes also happen in slower-mo and into the soft snow!

I might refer to the children's illustrated book of 'Mulga Bill's bicycle' (an Australian poem and later famous kid's book that I found last summer - funny pictures) as a caution to keep to the safer transports (in M. Bill's case, his horse not a penny farthing; in mine, bikes and trike with brakes). The very fact that I am typing this now is evidence that I've never downhill skied...

"Maybe if I weren't too old I'd try a single-speed, fixed gear, or penny farthing"

i've never quite understood this. when is this age? and what's so demanding? or is it from that TdF quote about the use of derailleurs from years ago?.

[hujev]

Hujev's gears in another (hopefully more easily digestible) format here

http://ritzelrechner.de/?GR=DERS&KB=30,41,50&RZ=13,15,17,20,23,26,30&UF=2185&TF=90&SL=2.6&UN=MPH&DV=gearInches&GR2=DERS&KB2=24,36,46&RZ2=13,14,15,17,21,26,30&UF2=2185

The one built round the suntour freewheel (with the 46-36-24 chainset) looks like a 13-30 6s to which a 14T sprocket has been added; I'd have probably chosen to do something different to that (in fact I did, see below).

Lost in translation (or my inability to make a clear table) - the Suntour FW should be 13,14,15,17,21,26,34 (with a 24,36,46 chainset). I took the 13-15 from a NOS Winner u7 (2nd version with that name), the 17 and the body from a NOS Winner Pro 6, and the 21-34 from a NOS Winner Pro u7! It's an experimen to see if the gradual and smooth increase increase in cog sizes is good or not; if not, small tragedy as I then get to rearrange them again!

(the 13-30 with the 30,41,50 chainset is the Sachs, stock as bought)

The SunTour winner pro is a great freewheel (I used to use those to the exclusion of almost everything else) but it has a few weaknesses;

- the shift quality isn't that good (not the best BITD, pretty dismal by modern standards)
- getting hold of sprockets now is both difficult and expensive. Folk want silly money for new ones on e-bay.
- for touring duties the 21t sprocket being the largest that will fit in the #3 position is a limitation; BITD there were converters so that larger sprockets could be fitted in this position.

I might be missing out, but since the 80s I've found shifts with freewheels to be perfectly good enough... I just can't imagine why I'd need easier or faster or whatever. I just think 'yawn' in response to any mention of better shifting (since I'm always just pootling along; of course if I were racing maybe I'd think differently so thank goodness I'm not as I probably still wouldn't be interested!

And I have a YUUUUUUUGE! stock of NOS ST freewheels and thus cogs of all good sizes so at least in that respect, I am stable. "A very stable genius, actually, like real smart and stuff". Really - my stock is bigger than king donald's AND king jong-un's missile buttons COMBINED, with the volume of any of the george bushes' cowboy hats thrown in besides!

I think some other cogs, e.g., 22, from other series will fit that #3 position, but looking at my list I have all 21s and 22s. but 21 seems to be just right 'on the way' from 12-14 and 32 or 34 on the other end...

... given that 7s freehub bodies are now getting difficult to source I may have to come up with another plan in the future.

That's my plan (which has perhaps gotten a little Megalomaniacal) - to have a decent stash of preferred freewheels to just keep using them, since they last a good long time and cost difference between the Phil hubs I like in threaded vs. freehub is so vast (threaded Phil hub + 5 WP-7000 freewheels = phil freehub hub without cogs).

Things started to go awry when I was living in Alaska and all my stash was in storage 3000 miles across the continent (the perils of life chasing gigs as a government botanist and moving frequently), so I 'had' to buy a few more while still available so I'd have local stock. Now this business of changing cogs just to justify my chain whips! So maybe the investment isn't the bargain I initially envisioned... but I have to say I just like fiddling with them, selecting the 'perfect' gears (even if stock is also entirely OK), etc. - the irrational passion of hobbies! And I redeem myself with the thought that I have curated these great old freewheels for future generations!

[Brucey]

oops.... is this better?

http://ritzelrechner.de/?GR=DERS&KB=30,41,50&RZ=13,15,17,20,23,26,30&UF=2185&TF=90&SL=2.6&UN=MPH&DV=gearInches&GR2=DERS&KB2=24,36,46&RZ2=13,14,15,17,21,26,34&UF2=2185

BTW one of the reasons I ended up using a freehub for touring was that getting a screw-on freewheel off to change a spoke was getting kind of tricky; if you pedal hard in low gears the freewheel can get absurdly tight. In fact the last few tours I did using a screw-on freewheel I basically gave up on the idea that I would be able to remove the freewheel using any tools that I could (reasonably) carry. Instead I aimed to remove the sprockets from the freewheel body and (since I was using large flange hubs) I could access the spoke flanges that way.

There are other schemes for dealing with a broken DS spoke of course. And in point of fact I have only benefitted from using a freehub, spoke -wise, (or indeed have had a broken spoke when touring) when I was daft enough to go touring on a terrible set of machine-built wheels.... [Not that my grandfather knew about such things but if he had done, he would undoubtedly have said "...ar, they'll learn 'im...".... ].

So in practice having well built wheels can trump other considerations regarding spoke access, but you can have your cake and eat it too; these days I carry a tiny tool that will let me have good access to the rear wheel spokes; I have never had to use it on my cassette hubs but it is nice to know it is there.

cheers