stem friction shifters on road bike ?

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Ajax Bay

Guru
Location
East Devon
What sort of gear changers has it got now? How many gears (ie sprockets on back, chainwheels on front)?
 
want to convert roadie to mtb gears....want to keep drop bars....am I being silly or does this sound viable ?!
I've done this with all my road bikes, both vintage and modern.

What is the current bike (year/make); what gearing does it have now and what do you want to change it to?

In most cases, it's just a matter of fitting the appropriate rear derailleur to go with the new cassette. Gear shifters/levers can be anything you want (whether that's stem/downtube friction shifters as in the post title, or bar ends, thumbies, brifters, whatever).

In the case of vintage frames, you may also need to fit a different drop out, in which case, finding a drop out that fits your frame may be your biggest (or at least, most time consuming) challenge. If you're changing wheel sizes from e.g. 27" to 700c, then you'll also need much deeper-drop brakes.
 
OP
OP
A
i have a triple now but the gearing is way too high for me...
 

Ajax Bay

Guru
Location
East Devon
bike was changed from rear cassette 11-25T to MTB cassette of 12-34T with long cage rear mech....
As I asked earlier (three hours ago and you've posted twice since then), what speed shifters currently or are they friction(as opposed to indexed)? From the title: are these shifters currently mounted on your stem? How many teeth on your chainwheels (x3)? If you can give all the info upfront that would be great for those trying to give you advice (though @velovoice has given you a general 'thumbs up').
 

fossyant

Ride It Like You Stole It!
Location
South Manchester
All you need to do is use a long cage mech - e.g. Deore. You are running out of options if you can't climb with a 30 x 28/34 on a road bike. I would suggest cycling more to improve fitness.

How steep are the hills ? PS I live in the Peaks.
 

midlife

Guru
You mean these?

Stem-shifter.jpg


Stem shifters aka gentleman's vegetables skewers

Shaun
 

Ajax Bay

Guru
Location
East Devon
From Sheldon:
"A note about capacity:
Manufacturers have to assume that their customers are clueless, and will expect the chain to have some tension on it even in the bad gears where the chain is using small chainrings with small rear sprockets. Thus, the rated chain-wrap capacity is very conservative. A competent cyclist who uses the gears properly can generally exceed this by several teeth with no problem. Most derailleurs also specify a maximum size rear sprocket. This is often a pessimistic value, based on the largest sprocket that is normally provided as part of that group." [my emboldening]

Best (nicest and lightest) derailleur available to do the job is XTR RD-M971 (9spd, non-shadow) with your shifters. This has the capacity to cope with your triple (22t) and a wide cassette eg 12-32 and maybe 12-34 (some docs give capacity as 43, packaging says 45).
 
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