Adapting 10 speed gearing to retro friction shifters

There are these little "caliper to cantilever" brake adapter things that increase the cable pull by roughly 33% length, and they can also be used to addapt 6 speed friction thumb shifters to pull a derailleur accurately over a Shimano 10 speed MTB cassette. They say, "You can't friction shift reliably above 9 speed." Yeah, right. It's just about pull length and cog pitch, so there are always ways. These little adapters can be had for AU$17 on eBay and will change 1.2mm pull per cog thumb shifter to modern Shimano 1.6mm mountain cog pitch.

The way they work is, the cable enters the pulley on a small diameter section, where a small movement results in a particular angular change. The cable then wraps around that small pulley and transfers to a larger pulley, fixed to the smaller one, such that the angular change results in a longer travel around the larger pulley so, as the cable exits the larger pulley, it creates a larger travel on a brake lever... or on a derailleur.

The image (courtesy of eBay seller, LilyBeiBei) shows the working, in this case, on a cantilever brake being pulled by a road leaver. (Useful for drop bar conversions of flatbar road bikes.) The eBay search term I used to find this device is, "cantilever brake adapter." Keep on hacking ugly.

July update: This will be very useful for my Triceratops One recumbent trike project, as I plan to run a 1x10 narrow/widerange gear setup on it using 6x friction thumby.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Removing Ollama From My Mac

The AI experiment in my "laboratory" is over. I've been running Ollama locally on my laptop, as in:- an 8G, local, offline language model, running on local, offline command line software. Don't get me started about the carbon pollution environmental disaster being created by serverside queries to AI like, "Does my partner really love me." The local-only model seemed like an affordable and accountable approach and my M1 Mac is energy efficient fast enough that even really tricky queries were sorted way under 2 minutes. The thing is, I never got a single, useful response to a query. Not one, that was fit for purpose, anyway, out of Ollama's "mouth." I figured that between my ability to describe a problem, and its probable solution, architecturally and simply, might result in useful code fragments for my various microcontroller coding and OpenSCAD design tasks. Not one. The work required to make anything useful was at least as much as designing i...
Read more

500km On My New Greenspeed GT20

Image
I've clocked a little more than 500 clicks on the new trike, actually and, while I still feel like the mid-drive doesn't help as much as my hub motor helped on the tourer, it is certainly more battery efficient and is still a measurable boost over riding unassisted. I still feel I need the seat a tad more reclined but, where the battery is mounted, under the seat, this restricts using the seat's full reclining range. I could go one more of the 6 remaining notches on the seat recline, but a bad bump might flex the seat into the battery and I actually feel like I need 2 lower more of the 6 available notches to prevent slipping forwards on the seat, especially downhill. That position isn't possible at all where the battery is. So I need to consider moving the battery onto the top of the pannier rack. A portraight of the writer 3 months ago, on test ride day. Having the battery bracket outboard-left of the frame and below the seat also puts it in the line of puddle splash...
Read more

The Ethics of the "Generation Ship"

Image
Having just watched this before getting up and having breakfast... As a lifelong scifi fan, I've consumed a tonne (well, a fair few kg) of this kind of story in my time. Until now, I've just revelled in the legends, but watching this, I've realised there is an ethical problem with "generation ships." Consent. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were volunteers and knew the risks. Collins went back as commander of Apollo 13 and got first hand experience of the life threatening risks. Space is treacherous and still largely unknown in Earth's perihelion (a wanky word for orbit), let alone beyond the heliopause, the end of the Sun's domain. What business do volunteers to crew a generation ship have, committing unwitting future generations of crew to such unknown?! It's one thing to risk your life on a tall ship to make a months long journey to another land, like has happened in previous centuries and generations, but how thoughtless and selfish do you have t...
Read more