Speak for yourself.

I have no elf. Please consider a remedial course for English spelling.

I still love the simplicity, clean design, and precise control, but I have switched to SunTour friction barcons for most of my new road bike builds. My physical coordination has always been well below average, and I am losing confidence with age. To keep cycling, I have moved to barcons, wider tires, and lower gear ratios.

"Clear your handlebars and your mind will follow."

WORD! The whole experience, value, rests on one simple thing.
Ride On
YUri

I rode with DT shifters for years without issue. And I still really like the aesthetic of old level top tube with handful of seat post. They just look right to me. Love all the pics above that show off that look.

where is the problem, or what is the question?

Yes, but even with a patina that's lacking 90% of the original clear coat and decals that bore even less of what once was readable, this '72 'Becane GR still gives me smiles every time I 'saddle up' even if it's for commuting now 'stead of miles upon miles.



We're both 53 years older than we were before we found one another; she's wearing nothing she was wearing that day besides frame & headset, but she still performs admirably if at a slower pace than back then.

There are hills where we ride now that challenge us both, but compared to the 'Flatlandia' we knew before The Big Move, this truly is God's Country where before it was simply what was beyond the door... nothing special.

She doesn't seem to mind the newcomers to our address either, point of fact being I think she enjoys the company of the younger set even if they don't quite speak the same language. They have a lot in common after all....

He has taken me some nice places, that Mondia.

Great bike. Have you thought about thumb shifters? I'd be sorely tempted to install them on a flat bar bike like this.

The old, still in service on rainy days

The newer, not ridden in rain much

I miss downtube shifters. I have no gripes with brifters, but no DT shifter ever pinched my glove. I've never tried indexed DT shifters. The concept seems odd to me, but I just picked up an SBC 4130 that has a 1x setup with a single DT shifter that I've heard is indexed. I haven't finished assembling it yet. We'll see.

Mine approves of your two youngsters!


Brent

There's a lot of nostalgia-generating material above!

Our tandem has brifters, and they work perfectly, but I was never enamored with them. Unless I'm climbing, my hands are usually on the aerobars, so it makes sense to have bar-end shifters (indexed for the rear) on the aerobars. Bar-end friction shifters existed when I was working at the bike shop in the late 1970's, but they were always on drop bars, primarily for loaded touring. Aerobars didn't exist yet. Three of the bikes in our family have 9-speed Dura Ace bar-end shifters on the ends of aerobars.

Tied with my current OCLV carbon-fiber Trek, my favorite bike was my '77 Mondia Special, of Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing throughout. That bike handled so well, and had a wonderful feel that it just wanted to be part of you. I met two other owners of Mondias of the same vintage, who said the same thing. All very, very happy owners. Don't let anyone tell you that the 21st century has a corner on great-handling bikes! My carbon-fiber Trek is nice too, but not in the same ways. It would be nice to have all the best qualities of both bikes in one bike.

Unfortunately, since it was steel, I broke it, at the bottom of the seat tube, just above the bottom bracket. That seems to be the most common place for steel bikes to break. There was not a speck of rust in it either. I have several friends who've broken steel frames, one of them having broken several. I got a new tube put in mine, and broke it again, all in under 20,000 miles. I decided my next one would have to be carbon. I have 64,000 miles on my carbon Trek now (and I have a friend who races and has over 200,000 miles on his carbon Ridley).

I would still like to have a really nice late-1970's bike again, kind of like a classic car that you drive only on Sundays. The only modernizations I would give it are clipless pedals, cycle computer, and maybe aerobars.

Those who did not grow up with down-tube shifters don't realize that when slowing way down or coming to a stop, we used to quickly work both shifters at once with the right hand while operating the all-important front brake with the left at the same time. The handlebar shape that was common back then used to make it more conducive to ride in the drops, and arm extension was about the same from there to the shift levers; so it wasn't really a reach. Before there was indexing, freewheel cogs were fewer and farther apart, so experienced riders could shift accurately and very quickly. At a large, 5-point intersection near home, if I punched it hard when my light turned green, I could reach nearly 30mph in the space of this large intersection, shifting up three or four times in the process, with down-tube shifters.

Down-tube indexed shifters have the most snappy response, because there's almost no cable housing. They're more reliable than brifters and pretty much maintenance-free, and you can operate both at once with one hand while braking with the other. I have 9-speed Dura-Ace indexed down-tube shifters on my errand bike. It was given to me with a 6-speed cassette on a freehub body that was missing an important part that was no longer available, so I put a 9-speed-equipped wheel in it. I initially tried friction shifters, but I had to give that up. Even when I'd look down to try to make sure I had the chain centered on the cog, when I'd get out of the saddle and torque on things I'd get a skip, with a loud bang. I had to resign myself to getting 9-speed indexed shifters, even though they were down-tube.

Grant Peterson, the beloved retrogrouch of Rivendell Bicycle Works, said indexed shifting brought a lot of shifting improvements, even though he doesn't agree that indexing itself was particularly one of them. There were shifters integrated with the brake levers as far back as the 1930's; but making indexing work work well required several things that came later:

• ramped and mated cogs on the cassette (or freewheel, but freewheels were going out as indexed shifting was coming in) so the chain is helped up onto the next cog only where it would mesh properly with the next cog's teeth;
• the chain being more flexible sideways, which is why modern chains have only 8 pieces per link instead of ten;
• mated, ramped, and pinned chainrings;
• the front derailleur cage is shaped appropriately, rather than just having two parallel planes.

That would be a Citroen.

You well described my historical respect for downtube shifters and my transition to barcons, wider tires where I can, and lower gearing. At 75 osteoarthritis in my hands and back has me also shifting to shorter top tubes and stems and short reach shallow drop handlebars with gel under the tape.

Count me as a late 1970's Mondia Super fanboy = mine with 531 SL tubing. Not quite the race feel of an '86 DeRosa Pro and not quite the plushness of early '80s AustroDaimler 'fast touring' models VentNoir & Olympian. For mixed surface rides I have a tubular wheelset with 30mm tires.

Welcome to BF !

200,000 mi on a CF frame bike - what model year is that ? and does he have/use other bikes???
I can see 8K steady, each year, but on just one bike - don;t know many (or any) who do that kind of mileage on ONE bike, for al that time - or even have just one bike...

If you're interested, I have a bunch of 70's bikes, in somewhat good condition, which almost never get ridden, and good sewup wheelsets, along with cassette based wheels, which almost never are ridden...
Over years, without any intention, I seem to have become a 'collector'...
probably more accurate would be 'hoarder'...
I see them and what emerges is a vision of a 'life well ridden'...
Ride On
Yuri
They could use a 'Tune-up' LOL!

No, but tell me more!

The flat bar (and the threadless stem adapter it's fixed to) got installed when I took the drop bars off. Using her for shortish 'commuter' rides had me seeking a more upright posture than what a road bike requires. Making the gearing changes (14-34 in back, 3x up front) for the hills 'round here came first but as the original friction shifters worked so well (still!) I never felt need of changing anything in that mech.

My Kona Dew+ has a thumb shifter though so I'm familiar with the concept albeit in a limited way. After acquiring first a Spesh Tarmac last year, then a Diverge late this year, I've pretty much burned through my 'disposable' income budget for biking stuff... but always interested in learning more about things yet unexplored.

I was happy riding my old steel bike with downtube shifters . . . until I got behind a guy with brifters. I could keep up with him fine as long as the gradient didn't change. But if I had to shift, I'd drop behind a bit, partly because my gears were further apart than his were, partly because I had to take one hand off the bars. I'd ridden that bike a lot, in fact I'd done the one-day STP on it, but the difference in efficiency was quite noticeable. My next riding goal was RAMROD. I bought a new 9-speed carbon bike with a triple. RAMROD went just fine. That carbon bike is the only single I ride now. Our tandem is now a 10-speed, also with a triple. Nostalgia is cool, but it doesn't get me up the road nearly as well as technology does. I don't regard triples to be nostalgic - they're just a superior system largely abandoned because they're a tiny bit less profitable and yes, they're more finicky to adjust. I know a lot of riders who take their bikes to the shop for adjustments. My first modern bike, back in '63, a full Campy Legnano, I took completely apart, even the hubs, and put it all back together, all cleaned and lubed. Bikes are really simple compared with internal combustion engines. Yeah, I'm nuts, but it's been fun.

I haven't been tempted to get a new bike with electronic shifting. I like stuff which I can fix myself. Besides, I was once riding with a person on one of those bikes when her battery went dead. I left her to her own devices which included a cell phone. She called a taxi. Similar to that, I have broken a rear cable at least a couple times but I just jimmied it to keep it in an appropriate cog and still had a 3-speed bike, finished the ride with the group. Good grief, what a grump I am today. I shouldn't listen to the news on NPR.

Some in SoCal would know him, "DJ," who is now 81, has raced most of his life, very successfully, and still very fast and rides over 20,000 miles a year. I don't know what year and model his Ridley is. I've seen it several times, but I don't know Ridley's lineup. He also rides a Trek Madone. I don't know what other bikes he has. He was in a bad accident in July 2024, coming down GMR, and broke a lot of bones. They found him unconscious on the road and knew he was a cyclist from the way he was dressed, so they started looking around for the bike, and found it 30 feet down the embankment. I saw him again only two months later, riding bike. The doctors were absolutely stunned to see how fast he healed, especially at his age; but I say, "Yep, that what happens when you're in great shape. You heal up much faster." When he and his wife go shopping, he has to push her in a wheelchair.

Thumb shifters are great for flat bars. Sunrace makes a good thumb shifter that is inexpensive. I installed a set on an '87 Rockhopper I built for my nephew. He's been riding that bike now for over 5 years with no probems:

https://www.modernbike.com/product-2...MaAsKjEALw_wcB

I used indexed thumb shifters on my 1993 Trek 750 which I hope to take out on a ride on Christmas if this weather holds up. These pics are from a ride I took on Christmas day a year ago:

Those Old Bikes look so Classic.......

Thanks! And from a vendor I really like!!

Looks like it should! Days above freezing before, then 48°F high predicted for up over my way. You could see 50+!

That's where I part ways with some of y'all. I can't remember an instance where I worried about catching or keeping up with another rider. I've never ridden competitively, even informally. I did one charity ride, decades ago, but I was just participating, not competing.

I've broken one frame: my mid-80s Raleigh Alyeska (555T tubing). I broke a weld at the top of a seat stay. I probably overloaded the rack (many times). I got it re-welded and broke the same weld a couple years later. I have no idea about the mileage, but it probably didn't have 20,000 miles on it.

I'm with you on this. My old bikes aren't as fast as new models but then I'm not as fast as I used to be either so it all sort of works out.