Oh and one more thing

by Posted on

The new bike has STI shifters. Every road bike made these days has those (or ErgoPow­er in the case of Cam­pag­no­lo-equipped bikes) but this is the first time I’ve got­ten to ride with brake-lever shifters. My first reac­tion, not hav­ing rid­den this bike more than a mile (I took it home on the bus since it was after dark and I had­n’t put any lights on it) is to run right into retro-grouch mode and bad­mouth them. the brake levers (Shi­mano 105) feel both more flim­sy and heav­ier than the 1992 Shi­mano 105 brakes on my rac­ing bike. My 1992 indexed down-tube fric­tion shifters are reli­able and I know what to do to get to the next gear eas­i­ly. The STI shifters seem to take dif­fer­ent amounts of push to go to the next gear, depend­ing on what gear you’re in.

Hope­ful­ly after I ride a lit­tle I’ll start to real­ize what a great bless­ing it is not to have to reach down to the down tube to shift gears and fall in love with the STI shifters. We’ll see. I hope that this is just my ini­tial resis­tance to change.

Published by splicer

4 Replies to “Oh and one more thing”

  1. I have nev­er known any­one
    I have nev­er known any­one else as anal about a bicy­cle. Unless it was a friend who was a semi-pro rac­er, but he did­n’t have LJ. LOL It’s no won­der I like you so much, even if you are an old Ford. 🙂

  2. I did­n’t get my first
    I did­n’t get my first indexed shifters until this spring. And they were pret­ty balky at first. It was­n’t until I man­gled and then replaced the chain that they real­ly start­ed to work well. But I still got over my dubios­i­ty pret­ty quick.

    I’m the oppo­site of you on toe clips… I tried some baby clips that just hold the tip of your shoe and have no side straps, and I like them bet­ter than any real foot holder.

  3. Well, for one thing, I’m
    Well, for one thing, I’m used to pulling up on the pack por­tion of the ped­al. If my foot isn’t in secure­ly, I have to pay atten­tion to my foot to make sure it does­n’t come fly­ing off the pedal. 

    Do you mean that you had­n’t used indexed shift­ing at all or just not the brake-lever shifters (STI or Ergopow­er)? My 1992 Lim­it­ed Edi­tion has indexed down-tube shift levers. and the index­ing can be dis­abled . If I were tru­ly retro-grouch I’d dis­able the index­ing on it and “feel the gears.” 

    Any­way, my chief com­plaint with the STI levers so far is that I don’t get an imme­di­ate shift. With my Lim­it­ed’s shifters, I move the lever and I’m in gear, just like that. With STI I click, wait a cou­ple of ped­al rev­o­lu­tions, and then I’m in gear. It’s like hit­ting the gas in a car with an auto­mat­ic transmission.

  4. arrgh, auto­mat­ic
    arrgh, auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion shifters! I would nev­er be able to stand wait­ing two ped­al rev­o­lu­tions. (My car has auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion and I’m think­ing of chip­ping the engine main­ly just to ame­lio­rate the slug­gish­ness of the tran­ny.) I sus­pect there may be an adjust­ment prob­lem that’s mak­ing it worse.

    And yes, I do mean that I nev­er had indexed shifters of any kind until this year. My tour­ing bike was a 1986, and index­ing was just com­ing into style.

Leave a Reply