Newbie question: Bar-end vs. Brake-Levers?

"Brink" wrote

With the bar-ends you have to move your hands to the drops to shift.
For me this seems less safe. I do not want to move my hands
frequently. I also do not want to ride with my hands in the drops in
traffic. When on the streets and approaching a stop light, you will
want to shift to lower gears prior to stopping. You will not want to
change hand positions first and then shift.

To me brake levers are safer.

When I'm in traffic, I usually stay in the drops in case I need to brake
hard. Bar-end shifters allow you to keep both hands on the bars in these
circumstances which allows you to use both arms to counter the deceleration
forces. Twice, in the past year, I have seen riders go down in a pace line
when they took one hand off the bars to point out a pothole and hit another
unseen pothole, losing control of the bike. It's tough to counter any bar
torque one-handed. That's not a problem I have ever had with bar-ends.

On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 21:05:22 GMT, "mark" wrote:

2. My road bike does have indexed shifters (Chorus Ergo Power derailleur and
brifters). It worked flawlessly for a few thousand miles, now that the
cables and housing are getting a little old I'm having trouble getting onto
the 10th cog. No such problem on the commuter and touring bikes, which are
in friction mode.

Is there a reason that replacing cables and housing is that big a
deal? I do it on all the bikes at least every other year as preventive
maintenance (probably because of experiences with tandems).

A few thousand doesn't seem a problem if we're talking 4-5,000. Not
sure that it should happen with good cable and housing at 2-3,000.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

On 5 Oct 2004 16:47:30 -0700, (Brink) wrote:

With the bar-ends you have to move your hands to the drops to shift.

Can't see that being a real issue. People shifted downtube and bar-end
shifters in the middle of racing packs for a long, long time without
it being a major source of accidents. If you can move your hands and
shift with someone close enough to tap your shoulder, you can shift on
the road. From tandem experience, drinking from a water bottle seems
to be a bit more of an issue (even if you can choose when you do that)
than shifting in any of the normal positions.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

On 5 Oct 2004 16:28:14 -0700, (gds) wrote in message
:

I'm wondering about your experience with older brifters and (lack
of)reliability. I have ten year old chorus gruppo. ~35,000 miles on
the brifters. No failures and just one total adjustment (and new
cables) when I changed out my cassette. Other wise just normal
adjustment as part of routine maintainance. Is my experience out of
the ordinary?

No, your experience is Campagnolo :-) I have not been able to verify
the story of a rider form my club who washed out of PBP after months
of training and qualifying due to a failure of their Shimano
flightdeck shifters. I am savage with bikes, though and quite like
the fact that bar-ends are at least as tough as I am.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

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