Originally Posted by
southpawboston
Rudi, I love that bar-end shifter you made! Does the cable path around the lever align closely with the cable stop built in to the mount? What was the lever from originally?
Thanks! It's not as functional as a Suntour but style is everything.
I'd been looking or a suitable chunk of aluminum for this purpose for a while when, on my morning ride up 8th Ave on my way to work, I found a pedal and half of a crank arm. And when Providence offers me a piece of cheese, I take what she offers. I had to fill a groove in the back of the crank arm with JBweld; you can see a hint of that --it appears as a dark gray shadow-- in the photo. Then I hacksawed, drilled, filed, sanded and polished the present shape out of the raw material of the crank arm. The lever itself is pretty primitive. I cut the cable path with a hack saw, which lines up with a two-step drill hole for the cable head. It lines up with the cable stop in the shifter body just fine, but my design does put a kink in the cable near the cable head; I suspect this will cause fatigue and premature failure. I first used this shifter for switching between wide and medium on a Sturmey Archer S5 hub, for which this was pretty successful. Now I've switched it to the Resilion derailleur, which has a very strong spring, and this shifter doesn't hold it quite well enough. I'll probably be able to fix that with suitable washers....