Now, what is going on here? Looks weird, right?
So yesterday I received the Delta Stem Raiser Pro (advertised to raise your threadless stem up to 4.6", though after running around with the Bosco bar with its 4" rise that's not as much as it sounds), and the Velo Orange Postino handlebar, so I drove the star nut out the bottom of the steerer, re-bent the tabs, and installed the raiser and bar with the old 90mm/15 degree "Power Tools" stem that came with the bike.
So far, so good. Except that now there's nowhere to mount my nice bar-end shifters! I tried installing some nice old thumbshifters upside down like
this, only to find that with my shifters and brake levers, when the shifters are in what I think will be a convenient position, the shift levers hit the heads of the brake lever clamping bolts! So I'm guessing that arrangement only really works if one is using what I'll call a
low-profile brake lever, which gains more clearance by putting the clamping screw opposite the lever itself. I also mocked it up with the thumbshifters outboard of the grips, which could probably work but looked likely to be rather annoying.
THEN, a weird thought occurred to me. I have two sets of old stem-mount shifters, if only there were a way to mount them. And people have figured out various gizmos for mounting junk on top of a threadless steerer ... if only I could mount something that my stem shifters could hook to ..... like maybe .... a quill stem? Surprisingly, I found that the ID of the threadless Delta Stem Raiser is about right to fit a 22.2mm stem quill, so I stuck one in and mocked up some stem shifters. My nice new Jagwire Slick shift cables arrived today, so I'll likely be giving this odd-looking arrangement a go soon.
