heyisforhumans

WTF seriously people...this is a small piece of cast aluminum and new they should cost $5-50 not $60-200. ughhhh

Yan 

I paid $65 for Dura Ace 9 speed barends.

clasher

Care to pass on that source?

JeanM

Pretty much any bicycle component could be sold at a much, much lower price. So could pretty much everything else but, there's the rub, companies are there to maximize profits.

They'll manage to get a quasi monopoly for example, like the triad of Shimano/SRAM/Campagnolo, like Windows on operating systems, like they do with contracts for your cell that are all the same, like gas prices that are too high and yet everywhere in a given area mysteriously the same, like Apple and its Apple store, like the Chinese are doing with many sectors of manufacturing.

They'll play on your weaknesses, your need for the best, for the most conform, for the good looking, for the novelty, for status...

They'll barely tweak the product and call it new, they'll introduce new technology that you don't care about and call it revolutionary and stop offering the old, yet perfectly good, technology just to keep the price up. Other companies will identify your need for the old technology, jump on that niche market but, because the sources are few and far between, they'll sell it to you for five times the price. Hence the bar end shifters prices. Count yourself lucky that they didn't manage to create a 'bio' version of it. The 'green' version must be in the works though.

I am building a new bike this Spring and I hope that it'll be the last, unless I outlive it which, at age 56 is still possible, theoretically. But I know that I will tweak/change something every year on it, that I will do more maintenance than I would really need if the products were developed for durability, not programmed obsolescence. I know that I will still spend more than I ought to. You got money in your pocket? Then be sure that someone is scheming right now to remedy to that abnormal situation.

Garthr

Do you want/need friction or indexed.

If you can use friction, get some Rivendell shifter pods https://www.rivbike.com/products/show...-mounts/17-068 and some Suntour Sprint shift levers from ebay or anywhere. But , even the ST shifters are priced silly. The Dia Compe's are the same thing, and they're priced high also. These are about as low as I've seen for the Dia Compe with the pods from a USA vendor https://www.velo-orange.com/diacosibash.html .

If you order from Wiggle in the UK https://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Di...et/5360043252/ , order something else to get it above $77 and it's free shipping. they have Dura Ace 9sp too https://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Sh...et/5300002745/

KDC1956

I like friction shifter best but then again I am getting old here too.And I like the old down tube shifters too.

Pigtire

If you have 8spd cassettes you can get these for $ 56.00.... https://www.jensonusa.com/store/produ...+Shifters.aspx

Commodus

Heh. It's "only" a small piece of cast aluminum. Can you cast aluminum? Can you do the machining? No? Then pay up, sucker.

rwp

That's a great price. I paid more. But since I don't use any other Dura Ace components on my bikes why can't I buy Tiagra or Sora barends for $20?

HardyWeinberg

I was assuming they only make one level of bar-end shifter, and they decided to label it the top rather than the middle or bottom.

tarwheel 

If you shop around and don't mind buying from overseas, you can get new Dura-Ace bar end shifters for about $75 including cables. That seems like a fair price to me when you consider the cost of STIs and the fact that bar-ends should never wear out, at least not in your lifetime.

I would not buy friction shifters if your bike has 9 speeds or more (probably not 8 either). However, if you insist, Dura-Ace can be set on the friction or index mode.

AlanKHG

https://www.amazon.com/Jagwire-Bar-Co.../dp/B001Q23VA2

If you just need the cast aluminum these do the job.

BengeBoy 

Yeah, I think Shimano has had that bar end shifter in their line forever, and somewhere along the way it picked up the name Dura Ace. It was indexed at 8 speeds, I know, and maybe even fewer speeds before. Now it's indexed at 9 speeds, but can be switched to friction.

I doubt they sell very many -- no reason to change the name, no reason to come out with lower end versions.

I bought the Rivendell bar end kit last year and used it to convert a vintage bike from drop shift to bar end. It comes with cables and a very nice instruction sheet that helped make installation very easy. The levers themselves were Dia Compe, I think. It's a nice set-up if you want friction.

An even less expensive option is to get a set of bar end converters, and just use downtube shifters in the converters - see post above

irideacenturion

I'm just curious what problems you imagine having. I've got my LHT set up 3x9 with suntour friction barends and I've never had any trouble.

njkayaker

Most of the bar-end shifter market is for tri-bikes. It's possible that there would be no bar-end shifters (let alone DuraAce ones) if there were no tri-bikes to put them on. And the tri-bike market is much smaller than the market for normal road bikes. The bar-end touring market is much smaller still.

Yes, and here's why. The market for bar-end shifters is overwhelmingly for triathlon bikes, which tend not to be low end. Since tri-bikes isn't itself a huge market, there isn't a place for lots of different models of bar-end shifters.

=============

Overly simplistic. So, then, why don't they sell them for $1000?

m_yates

Shimano SL-BS77 9-speed bar ends for $50.99:

https://www.niagaracycle.com/product_...oducts_id=6202

Bikearound

It probably has as much to do with volume of sales vs manufacturing costs as anything. If they can manufacture thousands of parts, the manufacturing costs per part goes down, if they sell just hundreds, they need to charge more per part. I would think that with some digging, you could find a set on eBay or CL. I don't know where you saw a set of $200 bar end shifters but they must be carbon or Ti.

DVC45

Thanks for posting that. Never knew there's an alternative to Rivendell's.

tarwheel 

I have heard that friction shifting can be tricky if your drive train is 9, 10 or more speeds because of the small interval between gears. With index shifting, there is a very noticeable click between each gear.

truman

In case it's not clear to everyone, this product only replaces the DuraAce barend shifter mounts, switching them from fitting inside the handlebar end, to a socket that fits over the bar end. You still need the shifter levers to use these.

AlanKHG

But depending on what you're looking for there are 100000 cheap pairs of downtube shifters in the world.

eofelis 

I was less bothered by the price of the DA 9sp bar end shifters, and I was a bit shocked by the price of the Pauls Thumbies ($50) to put the bar end shifters on the top of my bars. But it all works great!

Yan 

Possibly Universal Cyclist, but I can't remember for sure. It doesn't matter, because I checked them again a few months after I bought my set and they'd stopped selling them. Plus that Niagara link above is even cheaper.