haighter

I may be a bit misguided here, but I'm trying to upgrade the drivetrain on an older road bike from the 80's. I'm looking to go triple on the front, and all of the rear derailleurs I've looked at are marked as "9/10 speed".

The bike has downtube shifters. One of them is moveable without and clicks - pretty much smooth for 180 degrees of rotation. This is the left one. The right one clicks at each position - 5 clicks total. The freewheel in the back has 6 increasingly bigger chainrings.


Can I keep these downtube shifters and freewheel, while upgrading the front/rear derailleurs and new crankset? Is there anything I should be wary about before ordering the parts? Thanks.

snappy

any 8/9/10 rear derailleur should work fine. it's really the chain, cassette, and crank that need to be more specific ... although plenty of people have fine results without exact compatibility.

as for your shifter ... your right shifter should have a friction mode (no clicks). if you set it to that, you should have the freedom to get into any gear in the back. if in the future you feel like upgrading back to indexed shifting, shimano sells 9 speed downtube shifters as well as sti "brifters".

haighter

When you say that the chain, cassette, and crank need to be more specific, what do you mean? Will I also need to get a new cassette? Right now it has 6 rings and is a freewheel.


Was planning on buying a brand new triple crank in 170mm.

Will buy a new chain just because this one is very old.



Any tips in buying the above parts welcome thanks!

bluenote157

First off, if you are going to stay in friction mode, you can pretty much use those shifters on anything..6/7/8/9/10 etc.. as well, you can also use them on double or triple up front.

On a similar note, I've been successful using a 6speed shimano 105 rear derialleur to work with 9speed brifters, 9 speed cassette, and 9 speed chain. What this means is that the rear derailleur is pretty much dumb..it'll do whatever the shifter dictates as long as they have the proper pull ratio.

If you are keeping 6 in the back, you can probably continue to use your downtube shifters in index mode (or friction). The only potential problem i can think of is that your current rear derailleur might be a shorter cage and not able to take up the slack when you throw your triple into the smallest ring. Perhaps you can try it out first before you invest into another rear derailleur. The same is true with your existing front derailleur. You might be able to continue using this with the triple. Perhaps you should try that before you invest in a triple specific front derailleur as well.

With all that said, I think all you need to do is buy your triple crankset/bb and chain. What triple crankset are you buying? I dont know too much about triples, but if newer ones are spaced closer together, you might be better off with an 8 or 9 speed chain so that the chain doesnt rub while in smallest and middle ring??? Again, perhaps use your old 6 speed chain and see how that works out iwth your new triple.

Al1943

If you want 9 cogs in the back you will have to re-build the rear wheel with a 9-speed compatible hub or buy a new wheel.

Usually it makes more sense to buy a completely new bike than to upgrade a bike this old with new components.

Al

tellyho

+1 to Al. You're looking at new shifters, wheels, possibly derailleurs for that transition. You can get a bike for the price of the parts.

trustnoone

+100 to Al. Even a good new bike will probably be cheaper than an upgrade and your compatibility issues will be solved.

haighter

Thanks for all the great responses, I truly have some thinking to do on this matter.


I hear you regarding the cost of upgrading vs getting a new bike. My reason is as follows:

The bike in question was formerly my only bike. I used it for workouts, long rides, and the commute to the office. One day commuting to said office, I was struck by a motor vehicle. The bike was not overly damaged - the front wheel taco'd and the fork bent. I got a new (used) wheelset and NOS fork that was a perfect match on the bike; these upgrades helped keep the bike in usable condition.

The driver of the vehicle has since been found to be at fault for making an illegal turn into me. As such, the insurance company gave me $800 for the bike (their math) and an additional $4,000 for pain and suffering (and the fact that it took them over four months to settle this matter).

I'm going to take some of that money and buy a great bike that I can take on comfortable, long rides. I plan on spending ~$1200 on this. I live in San Francisco where bike-mania is rampant. Unfortunately this also applies to bike thieves who will find a way to steal my new $1000 bike if I were to take it down to the grocery store, pub, park, etc.Of course, this bike is going to be flashy, so I still need something to get me to work and around town without attracting a lot of attention. This is why I was thinking of upgrading my original bike to better-than-now specs. It's hilly here and I think the triple will help me get up hills (as the lowest gear on my double is still a little tough for some of these hills). The components on the bike now are SunTour that haven't really stood up to 20+ years of use. I've found some good deals on ebay for new Front/Rear derailleurs and a crankset (totaling ~$150).


Anyways, sorry for this verbose explanation. Basically, I want to upgrade this old frame with new components (sort of a fun, project bike) and also buy a new bike that won't cause me any headaches. I feel I owe it to myself after becoming $5000 richer from something that occurred while riding my bike. It's only fair to the bike gods that I do this.

wharfrat

haighter ... I'm with you. I want to do the same thing. I have a REAL nice 90's bike that is 7 speed that I want to upgrade. Sure there are compatibility issues to overcome and it can get costly. I want to do it anyway. Mine has all RX-100 components at the moment. However, I have a set of Aksium wheels with spacers to fit the 7 speed cassette. I can easily make that work by removing spacers. Now, I'd like to keep the front and rear deralleur and the crankset if possible and just buy the brifters and a 9 speed cassette and chain if that is possible? I'm going to follow this thread and see if anyone weighs in on IF this is possible. I think it is... HELP?

zacster

Let me tell you about what I've done with my 28 year old bike. First, I bought a good set of modern wheels for very little, $150. They were Velomax Tempests, the current model goes for $500+. I put a 10 speed cassette on it, a 10sp chain, not too much $$$ there. I also put new Tektro brakes, levers, cables on it, about $60. I had a Campy Chorus 10sp crank and BB, but I couldn't get the old BB off, so I put the new crank on the repacked BB. $0 spent there. A new $40 saddle from Performance, a carbon fiber seat post for $0 (I crashed a very expensive bike and the crank and post were the leftovers when I replaced the frame). I've spent about $350 on this bike so far, and it rides great.

I should mention that I left the old downtube shifters and derailleurs on it. These were the old Campy NR. Combined with the Shimano 10sp wheel/cassette/chain, it works smoothly and silently and shifts flawlessly, actually better than my Chorus equipped bike.

Should you do this to your bike? I don't know. The bike I did this with I had custom built for me 28 years ago with Columbus SL tubing. The paint is still almost perfect. It was all worth it to make it ride better than it ever did.

Pic of my Davidson I've since put the Chorus crank on it.

wharfrat

This is where I'm headed... I'm just trying to establish whether the 9/10 speed chain will work with RX-100 crank/chainrings? (chainrings specifically). I want to keep as much as possible and have the STI brifters. I'm looking for feedback on that... THx.

zacster

I had my old Zeus crank, 6speed compatible on it for a while with a 10sp chain and it worked OK. It had a little chatter. With the Chorus 10sp crank it is dead silent. The biggest issue with cranks is that the narrow chain may not mesh with the wider teeth. There is a gap between rings to consider, but that only matters if you drop the chain, so don't do that.

Brifter compatibility is a different story. They all have different throw ratios, spacing, limits etc... With friction shifters you have none of those issues. On a 10sp cassette the spacing is so narrow that you are almost never in between cogs. I find the shifting to be as easy as with brifters. The biggest improvement in shifting isn't the indexing, it's the ramps on the cassette that move the chain up and down as you shift. Shimano Hyperglide, Uniglide and similar Campy and Sram systems work great with friction shifting because of the ramps.

bikinfool

zacster, what was the rear spacing you had that bike built to and how did that affect your component choices down the line (and anything you did with the frame)?

zacster

The frame was spaced at 126 for 6 speed. When I put the 130 9/10sp wheel in I only had to spread it slightly to have it go in. I think the spacing was actually somewhere in between.

I did the same for another bike and also had no issues with the spacing. Just don't try to do that with aluminum. Aluminum doesn't bend, it is more likely to crack. That's why Al frames are so stiff.

cpsqlrwn

Are you guys saying that a set of old C-Record type 6 or 7 speed friction shifters will properly handle a Campy 9 or 10 speed setup in friction mode? I was always under the impression that there would be an issue with the right hand shifter being able to accomodate the whole range of gears in the back, an issue related to cable take up limitations in the shifter. Does that make any sense?

And you're also saying the shifting is smoother due to the ramping enhancements of the newer cassette's profile, allowing it to move more easily from one cog to the next?

peabodypride

Debated time and time again. I just threw a pair of Mavic Aksiums onto my old Cannondale; the original wheelset developed a stuck nipple which subsequently stripped and is not worth the time needed to fix.

Anyhow, I decided to play it safe and re-spaced the Aksium rear wheel to 126mm. Of course I then had to re-dish by moving the rim to the drive side about 1/2 turn.

All in all, you can upgrade your old Aluminum frame to wheels designed for 130mm spacing by doing it the right way.

eddy m

When I had a nice 6s bike that wore out it's drivetrain, I thought about upgrading. At that time, switching to 8s would have meant a new hub, chain, and front anf rear gear changers, and maybe a crank or rings. ERGO shifters would have cost even more, and I still would have had the heaviest bike in my training group.
I ended up putting a track cog on it, and it's been my favorite bike for 15 years.
I don't think 10s is much of an advantage without the ERGO levers. You just don't need all those close gears unless you can shift constantly, and in any case the biggest advantage is that you can shift standing up, so you never get caught climbing in the wrong gear.
For riding with my training group, I need the same thing everyone else has, which means 10s. When I ride alone, I'm happy with a single speed, but if I needed more gears, I'd use 6 or 7s with friction shifters. Friction shifters are way less finicky than Ergo, and wide 7s chains are cheaper and far more reliable.

em

eddy m

I wouldn't consider that the right way to "upgrade" a bike. You need to move the rim 2mm to recenter it. Unless you start with an offset rim, most wheels are already dished about as far as I am comfortable with.


em

Al1943

A 9-speed cassette won't fit on a 7-speed freehub. Are you saying that you have a 9-speed freehub with cassette spacers? What kind of spacers do you have?

Al1943

haighter, If you go with a triple crankset try to find an older triple front derailleur. You would probably have shifting issues with a 10-speed generation front derailleur. 10-speed components are designed to work with the narrow 10-speed chain. The chain you now have is 3 generations wider than a 10-speed chain. Even though the interior size of the chain is the same, the exterior width is very different. You may be able to find a good compromise with an 8-speed chain and front derailleur, or even a 9-speed FD.
To do it right you'll also need a long cage rear derailleur to take up the extra chain slack. The old derailleur would probably work OK if you keep out of gear combinations using the smallest chainring and smaller cogs.

What works on a double may not work on a triple. Mixing components with a triple is more of a crap shoot.
You would probably have better luck running a 9-speed cassette on a new hub or new wheel. And that would give you a lot more gearing options.

peabodypride

If the objective is to put a wheel designed for a 130mm dropout spacing into an aluminum 126mm rear triangle, I would like to hear a more "right" way to do that. The Aksium wheelset keeps the tension imbalance tolerable by lacing the non-drive side spokes radially.

eddy m

Maybe there is no right way to do that, or you could get a wheel with an offset rim. The tension balance between the sides of the wheel is completely determined by the angle of the spokes. Radial spoking doesn't affect it at all, except that in changes the angle a small amount. Regardless of tension, moving the rim too far over one flange will make an unstable wheel. Without doing some destructive testing, there's no way to be certain how far you can move the rim before it becomes unstable.
UCI has new rules regarding race wheels, and I bet your modified wheel would be rejected. I wouldn't ride it, and I hope no one on my group rides something like that either, at least not in front of me.
IIRC correctly, 126 mm OLD was standard about 15 years ago, when most of us had steel frames. The aluminum frames available then were generally not as comfortable or durable as steel, and the carbon frames were sometimes worse. They weren't too much lighter either. What kind of 15 year old carbon or aluminum frame is worth hanging that kind of cash on? Why not just ride it as a 6 or 7s?

em

haighter

I have to say thank you to everyone who provided their insight.

While getting the triple does seem possible, it also seems quite the headache. My train of thought now is to still upgrade the SunTour R/F derailleurs. Maybe something new, maybe something from the same era as the bike (late 80's). The crank is heavy and probably bottom of the line (Sugino), but it's one less piece that I need to buy and fits my BB. I fear that if I buy the triple or even a new double crank, I could run into issues trying to get two parts (crank + BB) to fit together when they were made in era's when bike componentry was different. I am not trying to create a racing bike, really this ride will take me about town, so I shouldn't need a really light, high-performance crank.

I like what em said about 10s not being much of an advantage. I never thought about it like that. True, I live in SF and more gears would help me tackle the hills easily. But I'm not afraid of a little challenge and think I can do just fine on the double. Will report back when I progress.

peabodypride

If you re-read my first post, I said it: the original wheelset was no longer worth my time servicing, and a pair of take-off modern wheels is cheap. I don't have time at the moment to fish for a new (used?) 126mm rear hub or wheelset, much less time to build a wheel around one.

The bike is actually nearing 22 years old. The 1980s Cannondales, in my and many others' opinion, are fantastic, if not funky, bikes and they still work. I use it as my daily commuter.

I have a hard time believing a half-turn of each drive side nipple is any more dangerous than shoving a 130mm spaced hub in a 126mm dropout.

zacster

That's basically what I'm saying. I'm using older NR shifters and there is enough throw to go through all the cogs. The only problem I have is that the derailleur hits the spokes if I use the largest cog, so I don't use it. The old Campy NR derailleur doesn't have the tight tolerance that it needs.

And yes, the shifting is greatly improved by the newer cassettes ramps. I think the ramps are the biggest improvement in shifting over the years. When I shift it is silent, no clicking, no big clunk in the back.