vsanzbajo

I chose to have a 7 speed freewheel and friction shifting on my bike, was this a common combination? Or by the 7 speed time all was indexed shifting. I know at 6 speed freewheel time everything was pretty much friction.
Thanks

jon c. 

I ride 7 speed friction. I believe it was fairly common at least in the early 80s.

vsanzbajo

When did 7 speed freewheels start? Early 80's?

cale

Define common. What sort of bike? I built up the road bike of my dreams in 1988 with Dura Ace 7-speed SIS shifting freewheel combination. It was pretty slick stuff and wasn't available on the Ultegra or 105 component groups of the time. Just a recollection.

CliffordK

Oops, I missed that decade

I remember the 10 speeds. Then the 12/18 speeds.

I just don't remember much about 14/21 speed bikes, but it does seem to be a natural progression towards the 8 spd ErgoPower in 1992.

Perhaps the department store bikes, so often seen, but not necessarily purchased, jumped to 12/18 speed early (to set their bikes apart from all the old ten speeds), but then only jumped to 7 speed as the road bikes were moving to 8 and 9 speed. 90's?

vsanzbajo

I have a Razesa frame that I built with a 7 speed Zeus friction grupo. The frame is from 87 or 88.

Salamandrine 

More like late 80's - around 88 and 89, at least for common use. While there may have been an exception or two, everything was clickshift by then. However, there were still zillions of people riding their 6 speed friction shift bikes, including me.

Oh, and most stuff was freehub by then too.

7 speed friction was not common in the early 80s. I don't recall anyone using it, though "Ultra 7" freewheels existed.

D1andonlyDman

My Tommasini, bought in early '86, had a 7 speed freewheel and Campy friction shifting from day one. My sense is that 6-speed freewheels with friction shifting were typical in the late '70s to early '80s, when 7-speed with a fairly even mix of some friction, some index-shifting began to dominate. By the late '80s, indexed 8-speed was prevalent.

Velocivixen

My '87 Miyata One Twelve has 6 speed freewheel with Shimano SIS indexed shifting, so there was indexing with 6-speeds.

Dave Cutter

I have a 88 Trek 360, 7 speed freewheel.... I believe to be all original. But it also has switchable friction/index Suntour DT shifters. I also have a 91 Trek 1400, with the free hub 7 spd, also switchable DT shifting... but 105.

Salamandrine 

Yeah, by the mid 80s everything was SIS or "accushift" and still 6 speeds.

The Tommasini would have been very trick to have a 7 speed at that time, but we are considering when it became common. As usual, it filtered into the high end first. It was 1989 when it filtered into the midrange shimano groups. (I just looked at a couple old catalogs to confirm)

I was working in bike shops (and going to school) during this whole time, so I'm not just repeating stuff I read on the interwebs.

Pretty much the 70s were about 10 speeds (2x5), the 80s was 12 speeds, and then there was like a new cog a year in the early 90s, though in common use most bikes were regular 7 speed index until the mid 90s (ish).

Salamandrine 

Maybe an upgrade, but it could have been towards the end of the model year too. 89 went to 7

https://www.vintage-trek.com/images/trek/Trek88_1.pdf

cale

I think it was 88 or 89 that Dura Ace went to 8-speed freehub. I recall that I rationalized that getting the "old-tech" 7-speed freewheel wasn't a significant drawback given that Shimano 600/Ultegra was offering 7-speed freewheels in a variety of ranges, meaning I wouldn't have to buy Dura Ace freewheels which were very expensive.

Index 8-speed didn't appear on any "prevalent" groups until the 90's.

D1andonlyDman

It really depends upon whether you're talking about mainstream Asian and American brands, or small European producers. Pretty sure that Shimano 8-speed 600 freehubs were available in the late '80s, at almost the same timeframe as Dura Ace - but the Dura Ace was lighter, and narrower range, while the 600 stuff offered gear ratios that non-pros could use. In the mid '80s, most stuff with Japanese components had already moved to indexed shifting, but lots of Italian stuff was still being sold with NR and SR friction groupos. Campy had come out with index shifting components, but they had a glut of inventory of the NR and SR stuff that they priced to move, relative to their newer index-shifting componentry. Most of those European frames had 126mm rear spacing by the 1980s, and it was trivial to swap out a standard 6-speed freewheel for one with ultra 7-speed, provided that the gearing was friction-shift. So, from a marketing perspective, that was widely done with higher end bikes that wore Campy NR or SR in that timeframe.

When I bought my Tommasini, Dura Ace and 600 freehubs were already available - although they might have been 7 speed rather than 8.

cale

Nope. The Dura-Ace group alone had 8-speed index shifting and 8-speed freehubs only came to the Ultegra and 105 groups in the early 90's.

D1andonlyDman

600 group freehubs were definitely available before 1988, well before Shimano switched to the names of Ultegra and 105. As I said, they may not have been 8 speed, maybe only 6 speeds, but they were definitely integrated freehubs that used splined cogs in a cassette.

Ed: In fact, they were 6 speeds using 126mm spacing. And if you used an ultra-spaced freewheel on a conventional 126mm hub, you could easily get 7 speeds in the same timeframe. Which is what many of the Italian bikes that came with NR or SR in the mid 1980s used. Here is one of them:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Old-Stoc...-9QejymWlfTN8w

Jeff Wills

SunTour Ultra7 freewheels came along in 1982, I think. The New Winner freewheel body could be built as a 5-speed, 6-speed standard spacing, 6-speed Ultra spacing, or 7-speed Ultra freewheels, with cogs from 11 to 34 teeth. I had a 12-34 7-speed, just to say I could. I shifted it with a SunTour derailleur and Bar-Con shifters.

Some additional arguing about dates is here on VeloBase:
VeloBase.com - Component: SunTour New Winner (NW-7000) Ultra 7

cale

Well you did footnote that after saying quite emphatically, twice, that 8-speed was prevalent in the 80's, which it wasn't.

"By the late '80s, indexed 8-speed was prevalent."

"Pretty sure that Shimano 8-speed 600 freehubs were available in the late '80s, at almost the same timeframe as Dura Ace"

bentrimcycle

It is common using the 7 speed freewheels.

cale

Or you could have just lived it...

D1andonlyDman

And I see that you emphatically ignored my later comment in the same post and subsequently, that they might not have been 8-speed, but they were integrated freehubs. And that, at the same time as Shimano came out with the freehub, SunTour came out with ultra-spaced 7 speed freewheels. And those were common in the mid 1980s.

cale

It isn't uncommon given that bikes are durable goods and can last a long time. These days, 7-speed freewheels are limited to very inexpensive, new bikes, or in the form of "available stock" for classic riders.

I always liked the freewheel design because they made hub maintenance easy and where easy to change out. (I know that sounds silly, I mean a freehub is so well understood and supported these days, but when the transition from freewheel to freehub came about, the choice to jump ship wasn't obvious to those looking for reliable racing components.

cale

No. I didn't ignore it. I wrote that you should acknowledge that you're very much mistaken.

D1andonlyDman

By "available stock" do you mean current product offered by Shimano and SunRace

D1andonlyDman

Apparently, you failed to grasp that my comment that those freehubs might not have been 8-speed was in fact that acknowledgement. But in any case, my main point was, in the mid 1980s, SunTour ultra-spaced 7 speed freewheels for use on conventional 126mm hubs were widely available, and they were the main competitor to Shimano's 600 series freehubs at that time. And that is not a mistake, it's a fact.