Hi there
was thinking of converting one of my bikes to use brifters
the sora's I picked up at garage sale are dissapointing tho in that the brifter body is made of plastic, and I'd really like some solid aluinum or steel construction

So, at what component grade do the bodies become aluminum instead of plastic?
This applies to both shimano and campy

Thanks


fun catch, I'm using a 7spd freehub, so shimano 7/8spd or campy10(shimergo)

All modern shifters are plastic.

Material is not the end all - it's how it's used and what it costs. For a shifter/lever body plastic works well.

There's nothing wrong with plastic. Remember that carbon fiber is basically carbon reinforced plastic. My dad would call it FRP for "fiber reinforced plastic". He was a chemical engineer and to him all FRPs fell under a single umbrella, just different uses.

He also worked a lot with titanium, designed a huge plant that processed it. To do what? They get the ore, they extract basically pure titanium, then they burn it into ash. The resulting white ash is used for paint pigment instead of a lead product. A LOT of titanium is used this way - all white paint uses titanium oxide pigment. I was horrified when I learned this (I was 12 or so and totally into jets and submarines) - why didn't they make jet planes or submarines instead? It's more profitable to make white ash for paint.

SRAM uses metal inner components.....at least Force does. Shimano, all the way up to Ultegra uses plastic. Dura Ace uses metal Sram must use metal due to the complexities of their inner workings in getting around the patent infringement of shimano.

All of them have some sort of metal internals. Actually the higher up the lines you go the more 'plastic' there is

funny someone should compare it to carbon fiber; I dont trust that material either

so my worry is this; I'm mounting them horzontally on mustache-like bars, so when riding the 'hoods' a lot of force is actually pushing them to rotate on the same axis as the band clamps and they tend to slip

I can keep tightening them, but I really do worry about cracking plastic soon....

humh, so the modern ones are plastic, time to ebay on old rsx 7 spd?

Plastics, at least FRPs, are typically good in tension, not as good with compression. A different lever, meant for mtb or upright bars (and meant to resist such force a bit better), may work better in conjunction with a gripshift type shifter.

I have seen threads strip out, but have never seen the plastic crack from over-tightening.

BTW, most mustache bar setups I've seen have used bar-cons and traditional brake levers.

Yup, stick to the old technology and save yourself any worries.

One of my biggest cycling equipment regrets was after installing a Campy rear derailleur on my first good road bike back in the early '70s throwing the stock Simplex derailleur in the trash because "it was plastic". It took me about 15 or more years to realize my folly. Turned out the Simplex was a weight weenie wonder.