I've convinced my girlfriend that we could have some fun riding together. So I'm fixing up her daughter's old bike for her to use.
It is an older Murray, probably 20ish years old. Heavy but fairly stout frame. 5-speed non-index shifting gear as shown in the photos below.
New cables and some lube worked wonders and it is rideable now... But the RD in particular is in pretty bad shape. the pivot where it attaches to the claw/hangar is very loose. Shifting is doable but very sloppy.
So... I found a Shimano Tourney RD with a Claw attachment on Amazon for cheap. Any reason I couldn't use it with the existing friction shifters?
http://tinyurl.com/mybpr4u
That got me thinking.... would it be feasible to add an index-compatible freewheel, chain and shifters to make it an index-shifting bike? (index rear; I'll leave the existing friction setup for the FD)
http://tinyurl.com/kjtlwfg
http://tinyurl.com/mhxc5kc
http://tinyurl.com/kxpqbqc
The frame has cheap stamped dropouts as you can see in the photos. The RD would attach with a claw-type hangar. So RD alignment would be iffy...
Any thoughts would be appreciated. If I can get it set up with reliable index shifting with the kind of gear I've linked it would be doable. The best answer is a new bike but that isn't in the cards at the moment...
Thanks in advance!
-Tom in SoCal
