this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Join the friction shifter gang!
There are so many bike things that I want to try, but have no good way to: friction shifting, single-speed, cargo bike, belt drive, etc...
I keep hearing the dude from The Path Less Pedaled constantly bringing up friction shifters, but they remain a dream for now.
I used friction shifters back when they were all you could get. Click is much nicer. In theory my 10 speed had 10 different gear ratios, but in practice it had 4 as I could never reliably find the 3 middle gears in the back.
I wonder if friction works better when you have fewer gears. That way, you can feel the steps more easily.
Is that possible? I suspect it is, because on my 11-speed Shimano 105, some steps are so similar, that even with an index shifter, you sometimes don't notice the jumps!
Friction shifters work better with more gears, or rather, they're more useful with more gears.
It's comparatively easy to make a derailleur and shifter that can reliable hit seven rear gears, but making a mechanical device that can hit the index on 11 or 12 speeds is not a trivial challenge; to get that to work reliably, in every gear, with a cable that stretches and sticks, is hard to do.
A friction shifter gets rid of the indices and the requirement to adjust stops.
This is also why electronic shifters are a thing: getting the cable and shifter adjusted is finicky with 11 or 12 gears, but the little motor can do it every time, and adjusting the indexes is easy. Now, if it breaks...
I have the same GX groupset on two bikes - both 12 speed. One is AXS, the other is cable. The AXS shifter never misses. Ever. Can't say that about the cable, which I've adjusted many times. I think it's a great upgrade.
It's also something I can work on, repair, etc. I don't think that's going to be the case with the upcoming setup where the gearing is colocated with the motor, and there's no derailleur. That's going to be a shop (or probably even manufacturer) repair.
This makes a lot of sense!
You cannot feel the gears with friction shifters. Your move the lever until you hear the change and your legs report a difference. There is zero feedback for your fingers as to what gear you are in. With a click shift you move the lever one click and you move one gear making it easy to select any gear you want.
Of course I'm assuming well adjusted click shifters. My old bike (was 15 years old but the frame cracked so I replaced it last week) the something was not adjusted right and so sometimes I couldn't hit a gear anymore, but it started out very nice for a few years. With my newer bikes the click shifters always put me exactly on the gear I want with no trouble.
Right, but when you've got something like an 11 or 12 speed cassette, your legs can't really feel much difference between some of the higher gears.
My assumption is that if the difference between the number of teeth is greater (i.e. a wide range cassette with only 6 - 8 cogs), you'll probably be able to feel the difference more easily.
This is why i want to try one! I'd like to actually know what it feels like, rather than assuming.
I've only used them on a 5 gear cassette. based on my more nodern bikes I'd expect there to be a significant difference between gears but I haven't had those bikes in working order in 20 years. My memory is I could never find any gears except the biggest and smallest.
I do intend to get those bikes in working order but money and time are limited and those are low on my todo list (my todo list will take 3000 years to complete so don't go expecting me to get them done soon)
One of my bikes has SRAM mountain bike handlebar twist shifters and they're great. Twist to select like a motorcycle throttle, selected gear shown in a window on the handle