abdon 

Can the front one pull enough cable for a triple road crank?

While I'm asking, what's the practical difference between a 'road' triple and a 'mountain' triple?

fietsbob

Its what gets used most for mountain bike drivetrains on a drop bar bike,
which are the easiest to install off the shelf groups practical for loaded touring bikes.

One difference is mountain cranksets now have a 44t outer ring ,
whereas there is usually a 52/53t on road racer style triples..

so the arc of the FD is made to suit the radius of the largest Ring..

M_S

Also keep in mind that with modern external bearing cranksets, mountain versions have spindles long enough to accommodate a 73mm bottom bracket shell or a 68mm shell with spacers, while road triples are designed only for 68mm shells. This also generally results in a wider Q factor for mountain cranks (I guess it would be 5mm, though of course it depends on the cranks in question). The only external bearing crank I know of with a replaceable spindle is te Surly Mr. Whirly, though it has one length for 68/73 and one for 100 (I think). Anyways...

This doesn't apply to splined (octalink, ISIS) or square taper cranks, where the only inherent difference is gearing.

davidad

With a mountain triple you can get a smaller grandpa gear. Down to 20t in some cases.

Jeff Wills

Yes, I've had several of these setups work perfectly.

Another thing to consider: "mountain" front derailleurs require more cable travel than "road" fronts. "Mountain" FD's include the FD-R453 front derailleur, which combines the longer "mountain" cable pull with a cage contoured for larger "road" chainrings. You might like this if you find the shift lever pull too hard with a "normal" road front derailleur.

abdon 

Damn, you guys are good!

This is my dilemma; I just upgraded my tourer (former Giant Escape R2, Japanese market model) with a Surly Cross check frame, drop bars, and Shimano Tiagra shifters. A week into using the new setup, the ****ing front shifter locked up

Tourer, fun bike, commuter; bar end shifters sounds like a good fit. The thing is that I like to climb and stump on it aggressively, as in shifting while off-the-saddle (no, I don't wonder why I can't get more life out of my chains) and pull on my horns while climbing. I'm wondering if the bar end shifters would dampen my groove by having to move my hands from the horns.

And for the record, I wasn't doing anything of the above when the shifter locked. As I said, one week of light commuting and out of the blue, no more shifting.

I have a compact crank, and managed to get the rear Tiagra dérailleur to wrap around an 11/28 cassette. I'm considering going triple but I won't know for sure until I hit the big mountains with a load on.

abdon 

Also, is there a point on going with the newer 10-speed dura ace shifters vs. the older 9 speed ones? I don't care if there is an extra click. Are the new ones better in any other way?

desertdork

You can climb in the drops...or rather the ends of the drops...if the drop isn't excessive. You can thus shift with the heel of your palm and your ring/small fingers. Your groove may be dampened w/barcons, though.

If you have a long cage (GS) Tiagra RD, you didn't exceed Shimano's specified chainwrap capacity with your current setup. A road triple crankset with that same cassette may require a long cage (SGS) mtb RD.

If you intend to shift in "indexed" mode, then you'll want the shifters to match your cassette. In this case, the BS77 is the 9-sp match.

The first 10-sp generation (BS78) has a friction shifting option. If you don't mind friction shifting, you can put these shifters into service with any rear cassette. For indexed mode, it will only work with a 10-sp cassette.

The latest 10-sp bar end shifters (BS79) lack the friction option and are only suitable for indexed shifting with a 10sp cassette. It's not a matter of it having "one extra click;" it won't match the spacing of the rear cogs.

badamsjr

I switched back to 9spd from 10spd for economy and range of available gears (at the time). I did not see much difference for the price of the extra gear. I had trouble shifting my XT FD and MTB crank with DA brifters, so changed to bar end shifters (with separate brake levers), and could NOT be more pleased with the result. Now shifting is smooth and easy to ALL gear combinations, but I do not use big/big or small/small combos. I have 22/35/48 with 11-34 9spd cassette and XTR RD.

Jeff Wills

Yes, this combination probably won't work. As I said above, mountain front derailleurs take more cable travel than the road brifters supply. It might work, but it apparently didn't for you.

HillRider

One option to consider is Kelly Take-Offs (www.kellybike.com) used with downtube shifters of what ever "speed" you wish. These are brackets that put the shifters right under your thumbs on the brake levers and are the closest thing to brifters without the expense.

I had barend shifters on one bike and, while they worked well, I found them inaccessable while standing, which I do a lot. The Take-Offs were the low cost solution to this problem and I have them on my Cross Check running 8-speed Ultegra downtube shifters with indexing in back and, of course, friction in front.

I also did what badamsjr describes when I converted an older Trek MTB to drop bars. The 105 STI brifter worked fine for rear shifting but the LX front derailleur refused to play nice with the front brifter. An old Sun Tour barend shifter solved the front shifting problem.