Cycling UK Forum

mikeymo wrote:
"Excuse me, how do I get to Skipton"

By train from Embsay!

I've cropped the shifters to avoid further offence.
The only STI's I've tried were RSX 7speed which were 'washing-line' shifters they had an excellent
positive shift and only lacked a trimming feature to make the gear change perfect. I didn't like the brake lever waggling about though, just what you're used to I suppose.

Yes Embasy predictive text I'm afraid!

Then from skipton I take the back roads to Connolly and crosshills.
Avoids the fast bit of the a65 until the A650 leaves the old road quiet again.
Makes a change from the hamster wheel if going round the moor.

Is the cafe at cavendysh pavillion open for take aways?

Sorry for the thread drift....all but one of my bikes sti btw!

Cheers James

I am no fan of brifters ( I have both STI and Ergo but my go-to bike (as Brucey once mentioned the bike that makes you feel like you're "coming home") has retrofriction levers and a 1980s Japanese back end (Suntour Superbe mech. and Dura Ace 6 freewheel)) but the feel and grip of my 7700 STIs are without compare. I've tried more recent variants from Shimano and Campag, and 7700 are absolutely my favourite. The washing lines don't phase me, so I'm sticking at these and 9 speed. I guess that makes me a retrogrouch? But I am in this century when it comes to grease: I use Superlube on everything, to good effect, including my washing lines.

The chat about cable shifts made me curious about how many shifts I'm on but given the lack of travel at the moment I've only just had the chance to do the route from work to home to count.

I did 87 shifts at the back and that wasn't an unusual journey, if anything quiet being a Saturday evening. I'm still on the original cables I installed (a jagwire road pro xl set) when I built this bike up 5 years ago. A conservative estimate would suggest the cable has done 87x2x300x4 = 208,800 shifts to date. Likely a fair bit more as that's only the commutes and misses any lunchtime errands/gym, trips to shops, detours on commutes, occasional leisure rides and the small amount of travel it's done this year.

Shifters are cheapo washing line style microshift r9s. Fortunately, the way those shifters are constructed means that were the cable to brake at the shifter end it would be dead easy to fish the bit out anyway.

Stevek76 wrote:…. A conservative estimate would suggest the cable has done 87x2x300x4 = 208,800 shifts to date....
Shifters are cheapo washing line style microshift r9s. Fortunately, the way those shifters are constructed means that were the cable to brake at the shifter end it would be dead easy to fish the bit out anyway.

that seems to be a better life than my chum got from his cables. A couple of thoughts ;

1) is the spool inside the shifters a larger diameter than the one in shimano shifters?

2) if you use a wider range of gears the fatigue damage to the cable will be 'spread out' rather than concentrated in one spot. My chum's shifting was (I would say) mainly concentrated on about three gears (his commute was mainly flattish, with lots of shifting which seemed superfluous to me), which meant the cable always broke in almost exactly the same spot.

cheers

Yes, was wondering about the spool size, it's not small, perhaps close to 2cm radius on a very crude measurement - they're far from the prettiest shifters about, do the job though and £50 for a pair... I'm unsure how that compares to the shimano ones as I've only got the under the hood cable routed brifters from them. I'd sort of assumed similar size to the shimano brifters with the indicators built in as they have a similarly large bulge in the hoods.

For shifting range, a bit broader perhaps but I'd imagine you'd consider my shifting rather superfluous as well! The route in question is just 2.5-3 miles and also mostly flat, not short on junctions/stops though and I'm too lazy to shift out of the middle ring on a trip like that, so mostly from 3rd to 7th sprocket, perhaps with a bit of 2 and 8.