Originally Posted by
johnny99
Back in the retro days, good bikes had the shifters on the downtube. Only the cheapo bikes had stem shifters. The cheapo stem shifters always had rubber tips so they didn't impale you in a crash.
The stem shifters on my first Schwinn were steel. And not the rounded-off, sissy versions, either. I went over the handlebars at least once that I remember on that bike, and my junk remained unharmed by the shifters.