Most of the touring bikes I've seen have cantilever brakes...even the ones with barends.

STI aren't any more finicky to adjust than any other index system. Failure to keep the system adjusted is an operator issue

I like bar end shifters a bit more and it doesn't have anything to do with "retrogrouch" attitudes or any other pedantic nonsense. I built my bike up over time and it was easier/cheaper to upgrade the bike to bar-ends than it was to buy new brakes and brifters. I've had a few different derailleurs and cranks on this bike too so it's been nice to go from double to triple and back without having to buy new shifters. Bar-end shifters are nice for riders that like to spend time in the drops, I can shift with the palm of my hands. Brifters are nice for people that love riding in the hoods. Bar-ends are nice to run on bikes that have v-brakes or if one doesn't want to be tied to a brand of derailleur or number of gears, friction bar-ends play nicely with many different configurations and give the user some flexibility if replacement parts aren't as plentiful as they could be. On a new bike I wouldn't worry about having to replace any parts for a while so I'd just ride whichever came on the bike if I was going new.

- Bar end shifters are cheap and reliable. If you read the threads in this forum, these qualities are important for many tourers.
- They allow for friction shifting of the front derailleur. This is important, especially with the big cassettes that so many people use. Touring bikes tend to get less well tuned during a tour and friction shifting allows you to remedy a chain rattling against the cage quickly. I consider this a huge blessing. Campagnolo brifters have something similar to friction shifting as I understand, so I expect they are more helpful than Shimano brifters. Repeating Sheldon Brown again: "Rear indexing good, front indexing bad".
- If you put your bike against a wall and it is very heavy, pressure against the brake lever might cause a shimano brifter to shift. This is less likely to happen with a bar end shifter (or campagnolo).
- I find that being able to shift many gears is an advantage that pays off for tourers. If you're in the completely wrong gear at the foot of the climb, it is easier to correct this with bar end shifters.

On the other hand, a lot of the advantages of brifters are reduced when touring because you're leisurely riding a very heavy bike. Brifters are made for racing, to respond quickly and dextrously. If you find yourself having to shift five gears quickly, it's your racing that is the problem, not the equipment. Brifters look good on racing bikes, but touring bikes are rarely beautiful as a whole. You're much more likely to find yourself having to shift while keeping a tight turn during a race than during a loaded tour. Deep in a peloton, a slight wobble can send the whole bunch sprawling, making the ability to shift while keeping your hands on the handlebar much more useful.

I found the suggestion to 'just take along a pair of downtube shifters' to be rather funny. For me, shifters don't fall in the category of things I want to take along as spare parts. In addition, if I have to change them, I will want to do so in my shed, not by the side of the road. But at the same time I wouldn't expect brifters to break down too easily, so for most tours that will probably not be the most important consideration.

But for all these reasons, I consider brifters to be an acquired taste rather than offering a real net advantage. They are certainly not useless and I can readily see why someone would prefer them; coolness factor plays perhaps a stronger role than some are willing to admit. And why not? Having a bike I love is of utmost importance to me, so I would certainly spend the money for brifters if I simply felt I wanted them. A tourer spends a lot of time on the bike; feeling good about that bike, for whatever reason, should be an important factor.

Remember to keep enough money for food and lodging though.

I don't agree on that one. I have toured a good bit with brifters and never had that happen. I rode with bar ends only for a short while and it happened often.

My 9sp Dura Ace barcon lost the indexed shifting after quite some years of abuse. There are some sort of plastic pins or pockets inside and some of those broke. They work well in the friction mode though. They are good, but at some point they may fail as well, at least the indexing mode.

All shifters are relatively cheap and rugged. Yes, STI levers are more expensive than barend shifters but they aren't any less durable. I've owned 31 personal bikes over the years and, between my wife and kids and myself, we've owned around 50 bikes. And I tinker all the time so I've owned many more shifters than bikes. Of all those bike and all those shifters...from friction to STI levers...I've had 2 shifters fail on me. And none of them were all that expensive, relatively speaking.

I currently on 7 bikes (4 mountain type and 3 road type) and all of them have indexed front shifting. It's not a problem to keep them shifting nor is it a problem to set up. The shifting actually works quite well, including the touring bike with 105 STI that I used to just finish a 4 week tour in the South. All you have to do is know how to adjust the cable to the proper tension which isn't all that hard to do.

Nope. Never happened and likely can't happen. The amount of throw and pressure that is needed to make the large part of the lever shift is too great. The small inner tab might shift when bumped but the large outer part of the lever keeps that from happening. Barends, on the other hand, are quite easy to shift with a small bump.

My 105s will sweep three gears on a downshift. If you find that you are more than 3 gears too high at the bottom of a climb, you haven't been paying attention to the terrain. And that hardly matters because the rear gears will pop off with an STI under load.

Try sliding your hands back to grab a lower gear on the handlebars vs just pushing the lever at a more natural position on the hoods when climbing the steep hills of eastern Tennessee or southern West Virginia. A slight wobble on a loading touring bike on US 60 from Gauley Bridge to Charleston could be more disastrous as a wobble in a peloton. At least in the peloton, you'll just get clobbered by other cyclists. On US60 a slight wobble could put you under a truck!



Bar ends are an equally acquired taste as well.

I had a Dawes Galaxy with bar end shifters for a while. Liked the bike, hated the shifters. And I have nothing against friction shifting, I still have, and enjoy, downtube shifters on one of my bikes. It's all a matter of opinion, of course, but for me, bar-ends come third of the three alternatives, by quite a long way. More inconvenient than downtube shifters and much more likely to be knocked out of position. And I've never had a brifter fail.

I really really like the idea of being able to brake hard and change gears at the same time.

I realize this may qualify more as trivia than as useful information but a friend who raced in the days of down tube shifters calls bar ends "sneaky Petes" because the rider in the group could shift gears surreptitiously before opening a can of whoop-ass.

An older guy I knew told me that bar ends were used at first by racers, think simplex retroshifts, but it quickly became apparent that another racer could reach over and shift another riders gears to easily, so they were not enthusiasticaly embraced. And racing drives everything, look at all the dentists wobbling around on Madones.

Just a question, if you have owned that many bikes over X amount of years, and changed shifters to boot, how long was the longest that you rode with one set of shifters?
I agree that brifters are fine, even from my firm "retrogrouch" bar end school of thought, but I just wondered this.

...which would be relevant if I had claimed brifters to be unreliable. They have more parts that can break down, but I don't think someone using them should automatically have reason to worry.

Good for you. I don't enjoy working on the cables of my derailleur at a campingsite, and I don't like having to wait for the end of the day for an opportunity to remove the noise from the chain against the cage. A friction shifter is a better choice if you want low maintenance, something many tourers find important.

Having spoken with tourers who did experience it, I think it's possible. So it's a consideration for me.

Indeed. I would not go so far to say "It never happened to me so it's impossible."

As I said: brifters are made for racing. If you can buy a cheaper, simpler part that allows more shifting, you're not doing something wrong. Bradley Wiggins has to pay attention to terrain, I prefer to enjoy the terrain.


Yes, falling is dangerous. This is irrelevant to the point that shifting from the brake levers is largely redundant for touring, but an advantage for racing.

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance involved. People like the brifters, they want them on their bikes and the reasons come later, to justify the choice. Nothing wrong with that. Bar end shifters are a more humble choice and offer slightly more benefits, depending what you find important.

No one said STI are more finicky than other index systems. Comments include that brifters (indexed) are more finicky than friction shifting. Most indexed bar ends (but not all) allow one to switch to friction. This can be nice during those times when the indexing starts to work less well (for many enumerated reasons) but one doesn't have the time, means, or desire to do roadside/campside adjustments or repairs.

I hope we don't start to refer to ourselves as operators and, by extension, bicycle systems operators.

One of the most irritating rides I had was with a guy with bar-end shifters who simply didn't seem to realise that his rear derailleur needed trimming. The noise was a nuisance, but I held my tongue. I decided then that bar-end shifters just didn't seem to cut it, despite this being an operator error rather than a malfunction of bar-end design. On the other hand, my STIs changes positively, smooth and precisely right the way through the 200km ride.

As to adjusting cables as seems to be a significant moot point, I have downtube barrel adjusters on my bikes. One simple one-eighth turn on an adjuster is usually all it takes to get my transmission back in perfect tune... really no different from trying to judge the trim on a bar-end.

The argument about chains rubbing on FD cages also doesn't ring true with the bar-end protagonists -- that is why there is a one-click trim adjustment on the STIs that I use. You have to do it anyway on triples as the chain moves down the cogset on 9 and 10sp, and I don't have to take my hands off the hoods to do it.

The notion that touring doesn't involve the need to change gears often in some circumstances also is stretching the rubber band a bit. Going through towns and cities always involves a decent amount of gear changing, especially at junctions, hence my previous comment about braking and changing gear at the same time.

I honestly prefer friction shifting to index. I've got a pair of retroshifts along with some friction levers in the mail right now to replace the brifters that came stock on my current bike.

I think most people just remember friction shifting as being clunky from the days before hyperglide cassettes. I like the tactile feedback. Sort of like driving a stickshift vs an auto transmission (not that I drive a car anymore).

And this goes to show what a Jonathan Swift Bigender VRS Littlender argument this is. I have been on multiple rides that listening to several drivetrains grind was driving me nuts. Guess what they were shifting with... Yep, Sti. They all realized it was happening, but could do nothing about it. I could have, but there is no way I will work on anyones bike on the side of the road other than mine or a friends, outside of an actual emergency.

I think that the best answer in this thread was Clasher, when he said that the OP should just use whatever came on the bike when it is new, as replacement will probably be pretty far in the future anyway.

And to the OP, this is nothing. Wait till you start a thread about pedals, helmets, or steel and aluminium.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly, but it's when one side gets all uppity about the perceived advantages of one system over another and uses arguments that on the surface seem reasonable, but aren't, that I like to take issue.

Of course, my solution at one stage was to ditch the gearing system entirely and go fixed. It worked like a charm. It's not for everyone, but then obviously STIs, bar-ends or downtubes aren't, either.

I've also ridden with downtube shifters on a go-fast bike (my first) and I liked them a lot, too.

My 31 bikes span about that number of years. Some have been changed extensively...and expensively...as the technology has changed and some have been relative unchanged. I used the Tiagra shifters from my T800 from 2003 to 2005 and then used them on a commuter bike from another 5 years. Both bike saw extensive use with the commuter bike being used 4 to 5 times per week for 5 years before I upgraded to a set of Ultegra shifters. I didn't need to change them but only wanted to.

Your post certainly implied that STI is more delicate. My experience with both STI and Shimano Rapid Fire indicate that while these are complicated mechanisms they aren't particularly delicate...nor unreliable.

You don't have 'to wait for the end of the day' to make an adjustment. Adjustments can even be made on the fly. Even if you have to stop, the whole process of tightening a cable takes less than 30 seconds. And it's not like any shifter...friction or indexed...is going to go out of adjustment constantly. If it does there is a larger issue that should be addressed. I did 1200 miles over a month and never had to make any adjustment to the bike that entire time. I commute regularly (3000 miles per year) which is much more demanding on equipment and I seldom make adjustments to either the front or rear cables for the STI I use for my commuter bike.

Generally speaking, however, if my bike has an issue, I fix it when the issue arises rather than wait until the end of the ride. It's not all that hard to do and usually forestalls problems that can arise from ignoring a problem.


Having used STI and barends, the barend shifters are much more likely to be shifted by simply bumping the shifter. The shift the STI while leaning the bike against something, the outer lever has to move a very long way inward to make a shift...we're talking most of an inch...and the inner lever, which requires less movement, is protected by the outer lever. It's just not something that would be easy to accomplish by simply leaning the bike against something.

In either case, shifting when not moving isn't a problem but more of an annoyance. In the case of the barends it's a much, much, much more common annoyance.

You are missing the point.

Again you are missing the point. Shifting from the hoods of a heavily loaded, slow moving bike while climbing is much easier and much more stable from the hoods than from a barend. The reason that the STI are more important in the Peloton is that shifting doesn't involve taking your hands off the bars so you are less likely to wobble when shifting. When riding on congested roads with heavy traffic passing very close to you, a wobble could have far worse consequences than one in a Peloton. It's not 'irrelevant' for touring and probably more relevant for touring cyclist who isn't in as a controlled situation as racers are.

The same could be said of barend shifters. People want them because they have an irrational fear that they can't keep the mechanism working. They may offer benefits to you but for those of us who don't use them, they don't offer the same benefits.

I, personally,didn't selected STI because I wanted them and then found justification for them later. I saw the inherent value in them even for touring over barends from the moment that they were introduced. I didn't choose them because they were high tech or because they were fashionable. I chose them for their utility and for the fact that they are, in my opinion, a superior mechanism over the barends.

If you find bar ends to be a better choice then, by all means, chose them but don't go all retrogrouchier then thou about them being the 'more humble choice'. That the main reason I responded to your post in the first place. You posted some things about STI that just aren't true and tried to show that the barend is a better product. It's an equivalent product but not necessarily better. It's certainly not better because it is 'humble'.

Just because they wouldn't do something about it doesn't mean that they couldn't do something about it. If it bothered you so much you could have told them how to fix it. As Rowan said, it's a simple enough fix. It can even be done while riding.

You do understand that there are people who cannot remove a wheel? The last thing that most people want is some jerk telling them what to do, and the thought of trying to get three bikes adjusted at one stop was not worth it. I noticed that Rowan also declined to comment on the rider with the bar ends that was bothering him.
Your response to this will be the last word, my gift to you, as your not worth discussing things with.

I don't know why that would be a big deal. On the rare occasion it is needed, I just reach down and tweak the cable adjuster on the down tube a quarter turn while riding.

Actually I did. I don't consider it a big deal, but I do find them slightly more finicky than down tube shifters. I also find that the adjustment needs to be tweaked slightly more often. It might be the fact that there is a lot more cable housing (my dt shifters have none on the front and maybe 6-8" on the back). I suspect that bar ends may be closer to sti that dt in that regard, but have not used them in years, so I am hesitant to say.

That said it is definitely not a big issue. Any of the choices mentioned are pretty easy to adjust and keep adjusted.

Yes, I understand that there are people out there who can't remove a wheel. But that isn't a problem with the equipment but with the individual. And it's usually a problem with someone who is new to the sport. So is it better to leave the newbie on the side of the road wondering what the problem is and how to fix it or would it better to try to be helpful? I teach people how to work on their bikes nearly every week. It's fun and rewarding. If I see someone on the side of the road who is clearly flummoxed and apparently can't remove a wheel, I'll stop to help. I may not remove the wheel for them but I'll explain how to do it. If their bike isn't working properly, again, I may not do the work for them but it's easy enough to tell them how to do it.

So which is more 'jerky': to let the person ride on in ignorance and be annoyed by the noise they make or offer assistance in a friendly manner? On the other hand, you could just as easily ride away from the person whose bike so offends you.

+1 The amount of time that is needed to make the adjustment is so small as to be trivial. I spend more time packing the bike than adjusting the derailers.