Kapusta

You are too stuck in argue mode to realize when someone is agreeing with your point of view.

BFisher

Ah, hair splitting. Microshift can be called Microshift. SRAM can be called SRAM, or Doubletap, Or they can all just be called brifters, or clickety bits, or COBS (Combination Brake and Shift), or whatever. Don't personally care.

The Retro Roadie thread is "STIs or Ergos," and nobody made a point to call out trademarks or claim it was exclusionary to brands outside of those descriptors. I can see that will change now.

Hanging out in this new forum will likely become about as much fun as hanging out in the General forum, where all of the "logicians" live.

70sSanO

Of course not. The original Shimano STIs were mass produced and the high end models were not cheap. Manufacturing high quality retro look shifters for a small niche market that will not pay a price to turn a profit is the ultimate losing proposition.

Would you spend $1000+ for retro look brifters?

Gevenalle is getting big bucks to slap index downtube levers on cheap Tektro brake levers. What do you think fully functional high end brifters would go for?

The future of maintaining older systems will always be lower quality alternatives, which is why a brifter based subforum makes little sense. Open it up to post 2000 bikes in general.

I’ve set up a few bikes for family members with 8 speed STIs, but they don’t fit this forum because a couple bikes are older, one is newer and all of the shifters are post 2010.

John

livedarklions

Sorry, I shoulda made it clear that was a joke.

I don't agree with you, btw, it's surprising how many of these brifters are still working, but yes obviously there's a limit. I don't think the fact that the forum has a limited number of years left is a reason not to have it at all, and, like you say jokingly, the name could be changed if needed in 5 years or so.

livedarklions

Gosh, I'm soooo sorry I quibbled with your quibble.

While we're at it, why don't we call all motor vehicles toyotas?

livedarklions

No, YOU are!

Sorry, I couldn't resist that setup.

One of us is not getting the other's jokes or maybe neither of us are. I think we're both saying that using the one-function name for a two-function part is arbitrary and silly. I just came up with a perfectly arbitrary reason for why people who want to do that would choose one over the other. Also, I had to post anti-cromulationist as soon as I had thought of it.

And it's not a real argument until someone posts an incredibly stupid ad hominem, so let me be the first one to tell you your dog dresses you funny.

Kapusta

Kimmo

Most high end ally happened alongside the last decade or two of steel, and went for maybe another five years with carbon stays becoming almost compulsory.

Hmm, I wonder if this criteria would work for this category:

Brifters and a 1" steerer.

Kimmo

Look, all you do is make a substitute indexing component for modern shifters, 3D printed in metal. Campy and SRAM levers would be amenable, not sure about STIs though.

You could probably do a roaring trade if you offered to pair Ergos or Doubletaps with almost any derailers for any number of cogs.

Hey, shout-out to joejack951 - this could be a job for Innicycle!

70sSanO

The real future is in programmable electronic shifters that will run whatever setup the user wants.

I think there are after-market attempts, but if someone came up with a very reliable “programmable” system, all this early brifter but no hoods stuff would go away.

Do people actually buy current bottom of the barrel 7 speed brifters?

Plus with an electronic system, you can run whatever brake levers you want.

John

Kimmo

I'd love to reverse engineer Di2 and make it my beetch, but the problem with that notion is the derailers aren't just dumb servos; they receive a signal that just says shift up or down, with their internal PCB telling them by how much.

To use Di2 derailers, you'd need to either crack them open and ditch the smarts, which would require more wires running to them, or reverse engineer the actual firmware, would would be pretty hardcore. I would so love the latter to happen, not sure how feasible it is.

You'd probably need more of an overlap in the Venn diagram between full-bore hackers and bike geeks, before it'd be at all likely...

70sSanO

I know the 3rd party electronic shifters have external servos. If, and maybe a big if, that can be mounted and function properly and programmed, it would be possible to run RD-7700 and FD-7700 derailleurs and shift them electronically by pulling and releasing a cable from a servo; the derailleur springs still move it back.

Then use the same system and program it to run a 600 SIS tricolor 7 speed, or even a Dura Ace 7402 with it’s odd 1.9 actuation.

The separate shift module design and mounting location would need to be well thought out.

John

BCDrums

I never thought that the term Brifter was connected to a brand. I learned the word from Sheldon Brown's website way back when. I assumed that the word originated when the majority of bikes had discrete shifters and brake levers. Using brifter made it instantly clear what you were and weren't talking about.

But today, when virtually all bikes have brifters, they're just shifters, and the young whippersnappers have never known anything else.

I think the proper name for this forum would be The Kiddies' Table, since we have been kicked out of the adult discussion of double-digit speeds and technologies. Who wants ice cream!!!

And thanks to HTupolev for using portmanteau. The perfect word for the job!

Road Fan

As I said before, I always thought "brifter" referred to non-Campagnolo. I'm not going to dispute it and if anyone again tries to lecture me about it I'll just repeat my version of dogma. You heard what you heard and I heard what I heard.

What about indexed DT, thumbie, and bar-end shift controllers? And why is there a line drawn after 9, excluding 10? And if 10 turns out to be ok, what about 11, 12, 13, and someday 14? And if I recall, Campy had indexing setups for the Synchro DT shifters, accommodating 6 speeds.

Have we drawn a line which makes sense? The last time I read it there were folks talking about how the mods had agreed to be flexible. Will we be exclusionary? I've quit reading the thread because it is too repetitive.

BCDrums

Not a lecture, a discussion. But I see what you mean about dogma. In fact, my karma ran over my dogma.

Do whut?

Thanks for coming, and goodnight!

Road Fan

As far as you karma/dogma, I hope nobody was hurt.

Do Whut? -- My point here is, BF seems to be the biggest bike forum. As such we should try to do things in a way which favors inclusion, even if we don't know who or what we're including. You can't guarantee inclusion based on enumeration of all the options, because you can never prove you have included them all. By enumerating the scope of the current forum, we are being inclusive to the listed categories, but there are types of indexing controllers which do not fall under that description. If we say "brifters 7 through 9s," we may disinclude anything other than a brifter. This disincluded class includes indexing versions of thumb shifters, stem shifters, down tube shifters, twist grip, and bar end, and whatever may have been thought up in the 1960s and before. Simply, anything which is not a brifter is not included, and considering previous BF usage of subforum headings, may be disincluded from discussion entirely. So one of my ideas was to retitle it "Early Indexed gearing and Retro Roadies" or some such title. You could set a convention that anything with more rears than 9 is "Modern Indexed gearing." Also if my interpretation of Brifters versus Ergopower is correct, there would be no possibility of accidentally cutting out Campy discussions.

All this talk about disinclusion: Is it likely a lot of readers and members might be affected or ticked off? No, because the non-brifter categories are nost likely the largest group except perhaps for friction stem and DT shifter users. But to discover a discussion about the rarities and learn about them quite by surprise is one of the charms of BF.

I would hate to see those possibly charming discoveries reduced.

BCDrums

'Zat so???
Far as I can see, all this talk about disinclusion is just you. I think that this subform, or whatever it is, is not necessary, but here it is! So I am reading and discussing. If you don't wish to discuss, do what this guy did:

veganbikes

I say we just get rid of all the subforums and just have one single heading, with every single possible name for every single thing included in the title so we don't exclude anyone.

I also think that maybe instead of more sub-forums we could just do a single fully inclusive one. Or maybe and hear me out on this one that we could just pair everything totally together creating a super mega sub-forum that allows every kind of bike thing.

Also I think we need a forum for early electronic shifting like Mavic Zap or Mektronic or Sachs Speedtronic which may not be included with this particular set since Zap I don't think used "brifters" and Speedtronic was for IGHs. Also some racers in the day would use a downtube lever for the front derailleur and a "briifter" for the rear and that should have its own sub-forum as well because it can't go two places at once.

Kimmo

By all means take the piss out of brifters not including Ergos fellers, butI've gotta back up and amplify this:
Damn straight. It behoves us to get to the crux of what separates C&V from this era we're trying to define with 7-9s brifters. It's not a bad first approximation, but Road Fan is right that we can do better.

C&V is almost by definition, relatively primitive gear - we're talking old-school tech if we say classic and vintage. Indexing has been identified as a milestone, and I'd say that's getting close, but for my money C&V is pre-HyperGlide. That's a pretty good line in the sand, isn't it? HG enabled indexing to work properly, which paved the way for brifters. It was a quantum leap in refinement, pretty sure it was CAD; it's relatively modern stuff compared to what you think of as C&V.

So how about just post-HyperGlide road, or maybe, early modern road - 89-04?

Something like that.
​​​​​​
BTW, this thread should probably be tacked onto What are brifters?, since that's the sticky talking about what this category is.

ShannonM

Just gonna throw my pennies in the fountain here...

"Brifter" is the best word anyone's come up with for "integrated brake and shift lever for drop bar bikes." It includes all the things for which one would use such a word, and excludes everything else, it's been around since about 15 seconds after the first such lever arrived in bike shops, it was coined independently many, many times, it's nicely descriptive, and it's easy to say. 'Taint goin' nowhere. (I did hear, way back when, "brift lever," but it didn't catch on, probably because a single word usually beats a two-word noun phrase in the "get more people to say me" competition, which is kind of a bummer, cuz I liked it.)

As to scope, I agree with the limitation to 7-8-9 speed bikes. Those parts were different enough from what came before and after to have specific quirks and requirements, and they're old enough that good spares and consumables are getting harder to find. So, it seems like a good idea to give them their own area. They tend to get lost in the flow of C&V, and inquiries about them in General Cycling Discussion or Bicycle Mechanics are often pummelled with "just buy a new bike" non-answers.

So, yeah... worthy, and properly scoped.

--Shannon

Sy Reene

Has anyone yet really pointed out yet difference between a 7-9 speed brifter from the 90s vs one made today?

I'm thinking now maybe the new forum should just be as simple as 7-9 Speed Road Bikes. There's so little discussion in the eg RoadCycling forum (where modern-ish road bikes seem to be on topic) on even modern Sora or Claris or Walmart budget 7s bikes, that I'm not sure if these were included that there'd be much contamination from whatever obscure motivation there was behind this forum.

ShannonM

I'd say that the difference is that the parts we're talking about here were high-end in their time, and they don't have much in common with current production parts with the same number of cogs. Lever designs, derailleur actuation ratios, other drivetrain minutiae... much has changed in 25 years. An early 2000s 9 speed Ultegra drivetrain is a different critter than any new-production 9-speed bike.

--Shannon

70sSanO

Did Shimano make any “early” 7 speed brifters other than RSX?

IIRC, Dura Ace, Ultegra, and 105 started with 8 speed in the 90’s, which I guess fits the early definition.

John

Happy Feet

I would find early era 7-9 speed a bit more inclusive.

I have a 92 Allez with dt shifters that isn't really c&v but isn't modern road bike either. While riding a road bike is still just riding a road bike, any gear talk sort of falls between the cracks in either forum.

70sSanO

Our son has an Allez Epic 105 7 speed from the same era. It came with DT shifters, I’m running newer 8 speed STI’s and dropped the 11t from an 8 speed cassette. But the dropouts are not 130mm, so I’m limited of what I can do.

I’m not a fan of how this sub-forum is defined as it really is so limiting it is destined to fail. It also revolves around an era when road bikes were at their lowest. The 90’s were all about mountain bikes. Go look at bike catalogs and road bikes were pushed behind mtbs.

But, if there needs to be a line in the sand for C&V, that line should be pre-130mm. C&V is maxed out at 126mm. Some mfg’s tried, but they could never convince the public to go beyond 7 speed freewheels.

130mm was so profound, people take perfectly good high end steel bikes from the 80’s and bend them just to get a chance at running the wheels people in this subforum take for granted.

If you go with 130mm as the defining attribute, you’ll have an opportunity to attract so many more people, who don’t fit anywhere else either.

John