I recently bought a used Trek 5500 bike, and the gearing was out of adjustment when I got it. I was having a horrible time getting the front shifter to make the climb from the 39 ring to the 53 ring. I simply could not get the shifter to pull enough cable to make the climb. I also hate the limited trim positions that brifters offer on the front derailleur.

I really like brifters and index shifting on the rear cluster, but I hate them on the front. Plus, I don't like the fact that it (at least, Shimano) requires a dedicated shifter to handle a triple, and a different shifter for a front double.

So I finally just gave up, and went to the Lance configuration: Using a simple friction shifter lever for the front ring. And it works great - whether I'm running a double, or a triple crank.

BTW, the left shift lever (I picked up a SunTour lever from I don't know what generation, maybe right before accu-shift) cost me $6 including shipping on ebay.

Instead of having it professionally adjusted. Brilliant. Or even just reading how to do it yourself on the Park site. Obviously the fault of that pesky front brifter. I can't imagine how the pros can stand them.

I am a bit confused. Do you hate front brifters simply because you couldn't adjust yours? Or is it the 'limited' trim positions? Not that it matters now but for future reference, a properly adjusted front brifter only needs that single trim position to get rub-free usage of the entire cassette. Not sure why you would want more positions.

The shift cable pull mechanism on the brifter is actually busted. I wasn't in the mood to put a new shifter that would have cost me at least $50, since I plan on swapping between a double and a triple on this bike - and I don't know how to do that using a Dura Ace left Brifter. And professional adjustment still doesn't give you continuous trim capability.

And BTW, Lance liked this configuration just fine - because it actually works better than front brifters. In most cases, pros use what their sponsors tell them to use - Lance was one of the rare pros with enough clout to use a configuration that was not approved by the manufacturers when he wanted to.

What I hate most is the limited trim positions, and the inability to easily swap between a double and a triple. And while the THEORY is that the trim positions provided are supposedly all you need, that's not actually the case if the crank has any flex to it.

bravo, well done...

but, nobody really cares what kind of shifters you like.

Whatever works ... but the reason people developed brifters, and that brifters because the industry standard, is that they are worlds better than all the other shifting options.

Please consider visiting YouTube and the Park Tools website. You can learn a huge amount about how to make your bike work properly, and i can tell you even a thumb-fingered idiot can do it ... I speak form personal experience.

Seriously, given how you "fixed" your brifter, what would you do if you got a flat?

(BTW, if you have a triple front brifter you can use it fine to shift a double ... I do it on my Raleigh. Just adjust the limiting screws .... oh, never mind.)

Actually I could have made it work if the brifter was not broken. And it was not a triple, so it never would have worked with a triple. And I've probably forgotten more about fixing friction-shifting drivetrains than most folks know. The limiting screws were most assuredly not the problem. The cable pull mechanism of the brifter itself was the problem. I could manually get the derailleur to cover the span, but the brifter itself would not pull sufficient cable.

The fact is, brifters are a superior mechanism for shifting the rear cluster. But they are NOT superior for shifting the front - especially with triples, which is why Shimano has basically stopped supporting front triples for road bikes.

And I've probably fixed more than a hundred flats in my 30+ years of cycling.

In any case, the configuration I went with is the one Lance Armstrong won multiple Tour de Frances on, prior to being stripped a decade later for doping.

My apologies for not being the thumb-fingered idiot that you see yourself as, but if you had the mechanical aptitude, you'd realize that this is a superior configuration, because it works, and it's simple. That's why Lance preferred it to what the manufacturers want the general public to buy.

Perhaps, unlike the pros, the OP doesn't happen to have a team of mechanics to hand his bike to after every ride. Seems like he found a solution with which he's happy that 1) is less expensive, 2) less likely to need future adjustment, 3) more versatile (double/triple compatible), and 4) more durable than the nominally 'correct' repair of replacing the defective brifter. It may not be everyone's preferred approach but it appears to suit the OP and might be something worth considering by others as well if they encounter a similar issue.

Your claim the brifter was broken is not convincing based only on the inability to pull ENOUGH cable. Many folks have seen that symptom corrected by proper limit screw settings and enough cable tension. And of course, the brifter has to be on the lowest position when the cable is tightened or you are building in slack.

Another cause of a problem is running the cable around the anchor bolt the wrong way. A mis-threaded cable won't pull properly.

Next time round you could try Campy. Lots of trim positions on the front.

The limit screw was not the issue, and anyone who thinks it was lacks an understanding of how the mechanism works. Because the friction lever works just fine with the limit screws set exactly where they were. How exactly, would an improperly set limit screw allow a friction shift lever to move the derailleur at least 4 mm further out than the brifter could?

You are reaching. One visit to the LBS.

I agree, Campy is better. The bike came with Dura Ace. I doubt that I could have bought the necessary Campy replacement components for $6 on ebay.

Because the friction shifter isn't indexed, it can move as far as necessary unlike the indexed brifter which moves through a limited range a specific end position.

Brifters are fine but dts and bar ends are too. Cabled brifters are definitely a bit more finicky that friction systems. The thing that makes friction shifters cool is they are so simple and almost never fail nor need adjusting.

Exactly why when back in 2001 when I was looking at integrated brake levers/shifters I went with Campagnolo ones. NAother advantage of the Campy ones is that if later you decide to go from a double to a triple crank you don't have to buy new Ergos.

I had a pair of Sora Brifters at one point and i too found them very finicky to set up.

Cheers

Funny. Suddenly on a Saturday evening in 2016 nobody likes the most popular brand and the most popular shifting system on the planet. Truly a 41 phenomenon.

It was not the limit screw. I literally removed the outer limit screw completely as a test, and the brifter still did not pull the derailleur far enough to shift to the large ring. But I could manually pull the cable and make the derailleur go another 4-5 mm out.

No shyte, Sherlock

I find two things remarkable about this thread. It was started on the assumption that left-hand brifters stink, but then we find (a) the one we are talking about is supposed to be BROKEN and (b) it is meant to do two jobs (triple and double) instead of one it was designed to do (double). BTW, there are specific left-hand brifters available on the second-hand market that are designed for both double and triple use, but I think they came only in Ultegra format).

The second is that a discredited narcissistic cyclist who now has nothing to show in the record books because he cheated, but worse, bullied everyone around him, is used as a reference point.

Hey, lighten up.

I was clear that I was talking about the low limit screw. The low limit screw can cause the problem as well as the high limit screw. If the low limit is too far left, that will cause the problem. It takes a really tight cable to make the shift. I'm guessing that was the only problem.

It wasn't. I eliminated that from the beginning, there was no cable slack whatsoever at the innermost setting, and the low limit screw was set correctly. The Brifter was damaged. And as far as lightening up, do you even have a clue that you've been insulting me since the beginning of this thread? The fact is, after I disassembled the brifter, I could see that a piece of the cable pull mechanism on the brifter was sheared off so that the pull mechanism could not engage on the last click. It could only engage at the low gear, and low gear with trim settings. The next click up was not able to engage because of a sheared off catch in the brifter. That's what I was referring to when I said that the brifter was damaged.

1x is the NBT, dontcha know. Throw out that front derailleur, get a SS chainring, a wide cassette and join the 21st century!

Actually there seems to be a Lot of misunderstanding here.

First off, front brifters don't suck ... unless they are broken. The OP simply failed to mention that his was broken ... and then said All front brifters suck. Not a good beginning.

he then enumerated reasons why he doesn't like front brifters ... while at no time mentioning that his didn't work not because front brifters suck, but because his was broken.

Actually, speaking as someone with Five Decades of cycling experience, i can say that index shifting trumps friction shifting (though when index shifting was new, I used friction shifting up front because trimming hadn't been developed) but once I could get to brifters I did, because brifters Are superior ... except of course, when they are either set up badly, or broken. Again, OP needed to specify that part of his complaint at the top, but failed to.

If OP has never used a properly adjusted brifter .... maybe he could climb down from his thirty-year-old throne and try one that actually works---but maybe he doesn't want to learn. Not really anything to me either way.

The double vs. triple confusion grew out of the fact that the OP said he wanted to switch between a double and a triple chainnring up front and would need two brifters.

I replied that he only needed one, a triple, and he could adjust it with the limit screws so that it only worked as a double when that was all he needed ... and that in fact, I have exactly that set-up on my Raleigh--which I bought before this guy even started riding. (That was also where all the confusion about the limit screws began, i believe.)

However, since the OP doesn't know anything about brifters, he didn't understand what I said, and assumed I was trying to help him fix his broken brifter ... Why would I try to help him fix his broken brifter when he said he had already replaced it with a friction shifter? I was simply explaining to him that he was wrong about needing to swap between a double and a triple brifter when he swapped cranks and chainrings (or added and subtracted a chainring, depending.)

However, since the guy doesn't know anything about brifters ... he missed all that

Don't much care how anyone rides or what anybody refuses to learn. If this guy gets his jollies hating brifters, better than hating some group of people I guess.

It's true. I love my Shimano front brifters. I wish I could get a 4-speed cassette so I could run front brifters on both sides.

Trek bikes, on the other hand...