I was wondering about installing a gear indicator for the rear 10 speed cassette on our Co-Motion Speedster. I can never remember where I am.
Because of the way the cabling comes out of the brifter and goes under the handlebar tape I was thinking to have the indicator on the surface on the front side of the handlebar. I should be able to see it and if I use that location ,for my hands, I could still grip the bars.
Thoughts?

There was a discussion about a week ago on this topic, but since then that thread has slid down the list somewhat.

I was also considering doing what you suggest, but ended up not installing the indicators because the resulting large cable loop routing would have looked too ugly. For now the indicators are remaining in the bag o'parts.

In the past on my single bike I have had a couple of these indicators break from sideway tugs on the cables, so to try preventing this from occurring you cannot simply run the cable exit down normally to your frame stops without adding a good amount of slack-loop too. Otherwise with one or two good turns of the handlebars you may end up snapping the indicator.

I would also be interested in seeing photos of someone having the indicator nicely installed in conjunction with "dual under the tape" cables.

As twocicle noted, you can put these things in-line anywhere along the cable housing run where you have line-of-sight. However, they don't tolerate short radius bends all that well and the ends will eventually crack. When that happens the derailleur cables can bind-up: ask me how I know. Ours lasted about 1,500 miles.




In practice, if you have a fairly large frame with a tall headtube and long cable runs between the bars and downtube cable stops, you can probably give it a try. However, as already mentioned, putting it at either end of the cable housing run will greatly increase the odds that you'll eventually have a cracked end-cap since those two points are where the highest bending loads are concentrated. You'd want to leave a few cm of housing between the indicator's end cap and bar tape, similar to how this looks.



I will note that years ago I came up with my own approach to keeping track of gear position using some small brass cable collars. These only work if you can see your derailleur cables along the downtube while riding. More info HERE.

The brass cable collars are absolutely brilliant!

Thanks!

-- David

What is really interesting from Mark's photos is the use of the left hand shifter for rear cable.

Those of us who use friction shifters can just look at the lever position. Just sayin'...

Do you also have a 10 cog cluster in the back? Guesstimating gear position is a lot more tricky with 10 than in the old days with sub-9.

Ah, no. When I'm riding the tandem I can't count above 5. But three of my solo bikes let me count to 6.

The idea of the brass collets sounded good until I went out and looked at our Speedster. The cable for the rear derailer is not going to be visible enough for me to see.

+1. My sense here is that the inline indicator isn't really a long term solution.

Once in a while at the start of a ride, I will need to ask the stoker what ring I am in. Once I am oriented, I really don't need an indicator to tell me what gear I am in. I really haven't thought much about it, but I guess that by using the inputs of cadence and speed, I can guesstimate the gearing. I'll miscalculate once in a while, but not enough to make me want to add a gear indicator.

Yeah, I kind of thought that might be the case. I just wasn't sure how far off centerline you'd need to move your head to see something attached to the derailleur cable where it exited the cable stop. On our Erickson tandems, the "old" down tube shifter bosses served as the cable stops. I didn't have a Co-Motion out in the garage to look at to see just how far under the downtube they were.

I probably should add that at the end of the day, at least on the tandem, I found I don't need any gear position indicators.

It was novel at first, but the more we rode the more I realized that if I could figure out what front ring I was on, I had a pretty good idea where I was on the cassette just based on how fast we were spinning and how fast we were going.

As for figuring out which ring the drive chain is on, I just look down and back under my right arm and there it is.

Triplet is a different story; there's a person in the way when I look down and back. Thankfully, the one we recently acquired as a FlightDeck.

I may regret it, but I might try that on one ride at Macon next month. Of course, if it doesn't work, my Flight Deck's still working.

Well, I've had either a gear indicator or a Flight Deck on my last umpteen bikes and decided I couldn't live without on this one.

There were a couple cable length adjustments needed, basically to make the gear and rear brake cables remain in parallel for added support. The zip tie ensures the indicator is protected from sharp pulls to the side.

The indicator is perfectly visible from the saddle and it does not interfer with my top grip at all. Uses up no more handlebar space than a typical computer.

Done. No more looking back, under and through two sets of legs.

... and for the front derailleur position?

The 3 ring circus can be managed without a safety net