Originally Posted by Mariner Fan
Well I took the old gal out for the first ride today. Shifting with down tube shifters is easier than I thought, though not as easy as STI's of course. I took it out fully loaded with the bag attached to the rack and found that it rolls really nice. In fact I found very little reduction in speed vs. my Lemond. The bike rides smooth and solid. Only one small problem encountered. I jumped on the pedals while outrunning a dog and it shifted to a smaller gear by itself. Is this common with friction shifters?
I don't know that it's the friction shifters. I put some hard miles on an 85 620 many years ago, and I soundly cursed that Duopar derailleur & that helicomatic freewheel a number of times. Really honkin' up a hill and the whole thing jumped in between gears. Ugh. Replaced it with a conventional (Suntour?) hub/fw and it would just shift up when applying generous torque, so I then suspected it was the steel frame flexing enough to allow things to move, because my (then) friction-shift road c'dale didn't jump out of gear no matter how hard I jumped on it.
Although... it couldn't hurt to tighten the shifters a bit.