Dura Ace compatability issue
 

My girlfriend currently has a slightly unorthodox set-up on her road bike with a Dura Ace 7401 7-speed rear derailleur and newer Shimano 7-speed "V-brake" integrated brakes/shifters, you know the ones I'm talking about. Indexing is fine and dandy. Anyway, she wants to switch to STI levers, so my question is: Will only DA 7-speed STIs work, or could something else?

good luck finding any 7speed sti's... I ended up getting a set of sora's for our tandem. I mated 7spd sora to 7spd deore xt rear der. It worked ok. I think they would work with DA rear der also.

Cheers-
Jim

most sti's will not work optimally with v brakes, as they pull much less cable. i tried this setup before i knew about the differences in cable pull. the brakes did stop the bike, even quickly when i needed them to, but they always felt a bit soft. there was very little clearance between the rim and brake pads and i had to make sure the brake was perfectly centered or it would rub. all in all not a setup i'd recommend.

if she wants to go to sti (and who could blame her) i'd recommend getting some nice inexpensive calipers and good pads.

Just go with bar end shifters. It's impossible to find good 7-speed STI's. Trust me, I've tried in vain.

There are adapters that will make Vbrakes work with the STIs.. They are Travel Agents and are made by problem solvers.. I used them on the SORA 7Spd STIs and some Deore XT V-Brakes. Stopped the tandem just fine.

Example not a plug for this place:
http://www.webcyclery.com/product.php?productid=17814

Cheers-
Jim

On second though, get some sweet grip shifters.

From what I remember, the 7 spd STI's had a different cable throw, and a)either the cassette was spaced differently or the RD's parallelogram was special only to 7spd DA shifters. I am not sure.I think someone on this forum is running 9spd DA brifters with a rear 7 or 8 spd DA rear derailleur. Maybe ViperZ and his Trek? He might have more info. If the cassette indeed spaces out as a regular 7spd cassette, you can always use 8spd shifters (like Sora for example). The spacing is not dead on perfect but it will work no problem.