Originally Posted by
DropBarFan
Shimano now makes GRX 1X & 2X hydraulic drop-bar levers & even an exotic inline cross lever but continues to neglect the touring market. No hydraulic 3X drop-bar shifters at all let alone a 3X9 that would let drop-bar tourists take advantage of the wide gear range of MTB drivetrain components. So we often resort to bar-end shifters yet Shimano doesn't make hydro "singlle-speed" drop-bar levers either.
I am not sure what you meant by "exotc inline cross lever", example please?
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I am running a brifter on the back on my rando bike, when I built up the bike I was unsure what I wanted to do for the front shifter so I temporarily fitted a vintage friction downtube shifter. Now that I have four years on that temporary friction shifter, it is not so temporary any more, I am beginning to think it will be permanent.
More and more we are seeing group sets that are designed to work as a package from all the major component manufacturers. And a lot of bikes used for touring over the years could easily be fitted with components that were not original to that group set when replacement parts are fitted, but could instead be fitted with different components. But, with the newer group sets, that will be less likely in the future.
And there are some of us that built up our own bikes from parts, often mixing and matching to get exactly what we wanted. It will be harder to do that in the future with many of the newer parts being part of a group set that was not expected to work with parts from other group sets or manufacturers. It is not just triples that are becoming an endangered species, a lot of other components that played well with other parts are getting more rare.
My rando bike that I built up in 2016 for an example has:
- Campy road triple, square taper, Mirage, 52/42/30.
- Campy bottom bracket.
- Shimano M752 rear hub, 36H. (I built this wheel in 2004 for a different bike.)
- Sram eight speed 11/32 cassette.
- Campy Veloce 10 speed brifter for rear.
- Shimano M739 XT rear derailleur.
- Campy Veloce front derailler.
- Huret (vintage brand for those of you that are not historians) friction downtube
front shifter. (The Huret bolt did not have the right thread for the frame down
tube shifter mount, instead am using a plain M5 bolt.)
- Tektro brake lever for front brake, older model that visually is nearly identical to
the older Campy Ergo brifter levers.
- KMC eight speed chain.
- SP PV8 front hub.
- Tektro CR720 canti brakes front and rear.
It was pretty easy to mix and match these parts from seven different manufacturers into a well functioning bike with an excellent range of gears. But it is getting to the point where parts are getting a lot less interchangeable. Now, seat posts, spokes and rims are about the only things left that are interchangeable with other component manufacturers.
A few months ago I bought a spare triple and bottom bracket to set on the shelf for when they get harder to find.