Cycling UK Forum

Hello, On my tourer I have the gear change lever on the down tube which was fine whilst I used dropped bar's! However due to back and neck ache's I have now converted my cycle to 'Great North Road' up-right handlebars. As the gear lever is 'down there somewhere' now I find gear changing rather difficult with my hand flapping around trying to find the gear lever without taking my eyes off the road! I want to fit a handlebar five speed lever, do I presume I just need a cable-stop on the down tube to make the simple SIS rear gear-changer work??

If the lever's not indexed then yes, you just need to anchor the cable end to the downtube where the lever used to be. Adjusters/anchors are available from the bike shop. If you don't have braze-ons on the frame for the old levers then you'll need to do a little butchery to fit the new cable anchors onto the old lever fastening band.

I have just replaced 2 down tube shifters. The first had braze on, the levers were removed then the stops screwed in. The second was a band on shifters and they fitted the same. The stope are available from LBS also listed at SJS web site Under transmision, gear spares, down tube stops. I also found out from my LBS (Scotts Cycles Birmingham) that the old thumb shifters as fitted to cheap MTB are still availabe. The rear should just index if you can get a 5 or 6 speed not sure about the front. You might have to file the cable groove on the front changer to get that to index.
You will need new outer and inner cables I started of with them to long and slowly cut them down to get a good fit.
Shifters and stops £30 from Scotts at Rubery Birmingham.
PM me if I can help

A guy I meet occasionally started with the same question and ended with buying a new Thorn complete with Rohloff - the last time I saw him he was chuffed to bits, as they say.

JohnW.