Friction Shifting and Riding Tips?

[Zack]

I noticed a discussion cropping up in the "New Chain Skipping" thread that I thought it would be worthwhile to dedicate a thread to this, as I have been thinking about it a bit - 

I am a relatively new bike rider, and change gears as it makes sense to me - when i feel like i need more speed, i shift, when i feel like i am not going to be able to get up the hill, i shift.  

But I never really learned the "right" way to do this.  I have learned a little about friction shifting just from poking around (lightening up on the cranks when I am about to shift, as an example) but haven't seen a dedicated thread to this, nor have I found a good resource.  I know for many of you this is intuitive basic stuff, but I never learned how to ride a bike from anyone that actually knew what they are doing.

I generally stay in the middle ring on my front chainring (I have a triple) and use all of the back gears until I need more, and then I shift to either the big or small chainring.  I am cognizant of cross gearing, but am probably guilty of doing it once in a while.

I have consistently had problems with chains slipping, throwing chains (both off the big and granny rings) across multiple bikes, which leads me to believe I am part of the problem.

So how do you ride to ensure that you are treating the bike the way it should be treated?

[Joe Bernard]

The remedies for throwing chains I've used is careful adjustment of the front derailer, and making those front shifts gently. One rule of them which will contribute to shifting this way is "shift before you need to". If you're approaching an incline that will require the granny ring, go ahead and drop down to it before you're at the "bottom" of the rear gears, then gradually downshift the rear as you start climbing. This has the dual benefits of getting your legs spinning before you hit the hill, and moving the chain slower, and under no load.

 

Whether climbing or descending, the rule of thumb I use came from Ned Overend (old moutain bike racer): Choose the front ring you need for conditions, then fine tune with the rear. I hope this was of some help to you.

 

Joe Bernard

Vallejo, CA.

[Michael Hechmer]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "throwing" chains on the big & granny gear, but assume you mean the chain overshifts and falls to the outside of the ring.  If so there are three possible causes.  The limit screws in the F dr may need to be tightened just a bit.  You can also buy a chain stopper, which sits on the seat tube and prevents the chain from going past the ring.  The only time I throw the chain across the big ring is when I try to shift the ring up while costing downhill.  Don't do that!

What front derailler are you using & what ring combination?  Some work better than others.

Joe's advice is good.  I would add that friction shifting a triple requires some finesse.  Unlike a double you can not just slam the shifters around.  You have to ease the shifter, even when you are shifting rapidly, as in rolling terrain.  It sounds like you understand most of the basics, so just relax.  I like friction shifters for a couple of reasons - they are very fast across a wide range of cogs and they require some skill, which adds to the fun of my riding. 

Are you using bar end or down tube.  The former are easier to learn on and use, the latter are faster & can be done one handed.

Michael

[Zack]

I have thrown the chain off the outside ring (i.e. the chain goes too far outside) and off the inside ring (i.e. it goes too far inside).  I have fiddled with the limit screws and followed the riv install a derailer video, by my eye things look right.

Setup questions: 

I have the Alpina FD

8 speed casette

Sugino 46 36 24 crank

Joe - what do you mean by choosing the front ring by "conditions" - can you elaborate?

I have tried shifting slowly/lightly and also more quickly, and have had the same problems (chain throwing, slipping under load).  

On Tuesday, April 17, 2012 4:44:51 PM UTC-4, Zack wrote:

[Michael Hechmer]

I'm not familiar with that derailler.   Make sure the derailler is only a couple of mm above the big ring.  Some deraillers, including the popular 105, have such a long cage that they cannot be lowered down to a 46 ring without hitting the chain stay.  I use the Campy, which has a pretty short cage and allows me to go right down to my 44 big ring.  Also, when the chain is on the big ring and small cog the outside of the derailler should be about 5 mm from the chain.  Ditto on the inside.  With a triple, I always use a chain stop on the inside.

"Slipping under load?"  do you mean on the rings?  That suggest worn teeth.  Check for teeth that have a hook in their profile.  If you mean on the cogs, make sure the D rings are tight.  I use Silver Shifters and find the D rings stay pretty tight on the DT shifters but I regularly retighten the D rings on my & my wife's BE shifters. After that you are probably experiencing a worn chain or cog teeth.

michael

[Eric Norris]

From the Master (Sheldon Brown): Everything you need to know about chain wear, skipping, etc.:

http://sheldonbrown.com/chains.html

--Eric N

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[Zack]

FD was from Riv, I had them do the setup last year when I got the bike.

It would surprise me if I had already worn out either a chainring or a casette, only rode the Sam for the end of the summer until now, less than 1,000 miles I would imagine.

slipping on the cogs, not the rings.  

have read the sheldon article on chains, and also the one on chain slip.  I tried some grease underneath the bb to see if that will help.

was just more interested in riding tips than troubleshooting the derailer stuff, as I have seen lots of tips on the derailers but not much on the riding.

On Tuesday, April 17, 2012 4:44:51 PM UTC-4, Zack wrote:

[Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery]

If it's skipping around the rear cluster with Silver shifters, I'd suggest making sure the shifter bolt is tight. Also, I find that these shifters are at their best with 7/8sp cassettes or freewheels. With 9sp, the ratcheting is too imprecise for my tastes, but others report apparently satisfactory performance.

Otherwise, try to soft-pedal when shifting, shift before you NEED to shift, and try to shift gracefully and in a controlled way rather than slamming the shifter into position with a wild motion. Probably nobody has discussed the finer points of the process because there isn't much to discuss. It's pretty unsophisticated (don't tell anyone).

[Joe Bernard]

Zack, I live in a hilly area so I use all three rings pretty often..this may not apply to your terrain. Like you, I ride flattish roads in the middle ring, but when approaching an incline I'll usually shift to the small ring up front before "bottoming out" the gears in back. So my "conditions" are granny-ring for up, middle-ring for flat, big-ring for downhill. I'm using the front shifting to establish the parameters, then fine-tuning with the rear.

 

Now here's where this helps with overshifts on the front: Let's say you're in the middle ring, in the highest gear in back. Look down and what do you see? The chain is angling to the right to get to the smallest rear cog. Now you want to shift the front of the chain to the right, also, to get your highest gear. You're more likely to throw the chain past the chainring in this situation because the rest of the chain is veering that way. But let's say you're only in the middle rear cogs, then decide to shift the front . Less chance of "overthrow", because the chain started out in more of a straight line front-to-back before the front shift. This works the other direction, too. You're more likely to overshift the granny if the chain is already all the way to the spokes in back.

 

I'm sorry if that's not clear, feel free to keep asking questions. Btw, my Rivendell Romulus came to me with a similar drivetrain, and overshifted like the dickens when I first got it. It was a hard lesson..

 

Joe Bernard

Vallejo, CA.

[Zack]

Joe -

Thank you for the response - perfect description, and also the exact opposite of what I have been doing.

To some of you guys may just be intuitive or obvious, but it takes me a little bit to catch on to things.  

I will also tighten the silvers up again.  It does seem like I have to really have them tight in order for them not to slip on the Sam.  I had a Salsa Casseroll that had silvers which was not nearly as finnicky.  

[Horace]

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 7:46 PM, Zack <zac...@gmail.com> wrote:

I will also tighten the silvers up again.  It does seem like I have to really have them tight in order for them not to slip on the Sam.  I had a Salsa Casseroll that had silvers which was not nearly as finnicky.  

I had this issue on my Romulus a while back -- I couldn't seem to tighten the Silver shifter enough. It turns out that the square-hole washer was not seated well against the frame, and that was preventing proper adjustment of the shifter. I filed down the washer a little and it was fine after that.

Horace.

[Joe Bernard]

What may seem intuitive to me today came from reading exactly the way you're doing now. It may be possible to teach oneself all the shifting tricks strictly from riding and doing, but I prefer to ask someone who already knows them. My front shifting approach was derived from a Bicycling Magazine article witten 20 years ago by Ned Overend..teaching mountain bike racing, of all things. It made sense; I tried it on the road; it worked.

 

Joe Bernard

Vallejo, CA. 

[RJM]

Hey, Bicycling Magazine every so often is good for something. 

 

I kid, I kid.

[pam]

Which one is the shifter bolt? If I ask the LBS will they know which
one it is? I do have the Silver shifters. It is a 8 speed. It only
skips occasionally - twice in 14 miles. It's more an annoyance since
there are no squeaks or rattles otherwise.
Thanks,
Pam

On Apr 17, 8:07 pm, Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery <thill....@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery]

It's the little loop bolt that attaches the shifter to the frame or to the bar-end pod. You can tighten it with your fingers. Your LBS will know exactly what to do, if you ask.

[Ryan Ray]

I'm a friction noob too but some things that helped me:

• Move to a compact double. Seriously. I have one less gear I didn't need anyway and I fiddle with my shifters 90% less. Anyone who says a triple in front is just as easy as a double hash been riding bikes for a very long time, or loves their set up so much they refuse to realize the added complexity.
• Know that even with brifters triples are annoying
• Friction shifting can be like driving a manual. You learn to shift at the right speed, at the right time. Faster is not best.
• Shift less.
• Good shifters are allot better than crappy ones. I have Shimanos which are OK. I want Silvers which I tried the other day and liked allot better. Old school Suntour Ratchets were good too.
• A unified drivetrain helps. Some people can cobble together all softs of parts and friction shift just fine. In fact it's the reason some people prefer friction. I however found my all 8-speed set up to be nearly flawless. I had lots of mis shifting with a mixed up drivetrain.
• Rapid rise derailler. In hilly Seattle this really helps me shift uphills.
• Like everything: practice.
• If you can over/under shift your chain off gears and you corrected your adjustment screws then either something is broken or not set up right. The older... ahem wiser folks can't remember how tricky adjustment screws can be when first learning how to set this stuff up. It takes practice or someone really showing you how to do it.

I hope any of this helps. It may be stuff that only worked for me but now I could never go back to indexed shifting.

- Ryan

On Tuesday, April 17, 2012 1:44:51 PM UTC-7, Zack wrote:

[Jim]

I have this 25 year hole in my riding history, stopped around 1987, just restarted last year.  So i've never NOT shifted friction.  Before my Hilsen, I  was grinding gears through an old (and miserable) "schwinn-approved" Huret.  That will get upgraded if i ever bring that bike back on line...

I've noticed some chain-skipping in certain rear cogs on my Hilsen (i've been riding the center chain ring pretty exclusively), and it can always be resolved by a bit of trimming the shifter, usually one click (silver bar-ends) one way or another.  I've rationalized it to myself that the relation between the position of the chain for the various ratchet clicks of the shifter are more suited for some of the cogs than others (i.e., there are three click positions that work for some gears, only two for others, so those are more likely to result in skippy or clunky shifting).  Interestingly, skipping is almost always a downshifting event for me, upshifts are solid and delightful.  My old Schwinn had similar, but more severe problems, i could get the chain between cogs on that one, resulting in no drive at all, just a free spinning crank.  Fun when it happened approaching a big hill.

Jim in Boulder

[Michael Hechmer]

Right on happycamper!  I couldn't agree more.  I run both a double and triples in 9 speed mode and am happy with both, but anyone who says a triple is just as easy to use as a double is probably in denial.  My favorite setup is on my Ram,  44/30 rings on a White Ind Crank mated to an 11/28 9 spd cassette. This gives me 108 gi at the high end, and 30 at the low, a very simple shifting pattern, and reasonably closely spaced gears.  The only downside to this set up is the initial cost of the White Crank.  I know some will balk at the black rings but the are highly polished so I got over it in a hurry.

As for those limit screws.... yup, even after 35 years of riding I always scratch my head and try to remember which is the inside and which the outside.  On some deraillers  you can't see the mechanism.

My only place of divergence is on "integration".  I run Campy FD, the new Ultegra 6700 RD, Conex Chain and Shimano HG cassettes, and ramped rings.  With Silver shifters the performance is way better than the Ultegra SIS I have used.

The sun is shining; I'm gonna hit the road.

Michael

[Steve Palincsar]

On Wed, 2012-04-18 at 11:43 -0700, Michael Hechmer wrote:
> Right on happycamper! I couldn't agree more. I run both a double and
> triples in 9 speed mode and am happy with both, but anyone who says a
> triple is just as easy to use as a double is probably in denial.

I'll say it, and I'm definitely not "in denial." How is a triple
"difficult"? Ignore the granny and it's a double. But unlike a double,
if you /need/ the lowesst range, it's there.

[PATRICK MOORE]

I'll say it too. In fact, I'm wondering if there is really any
practical benefit from going (as I loudly announced) from a 3X7 to a
2X9.

Question: the 19 t cog works fine with the 46 but it skips with the
36. Does anyone have any ideas why this might be? I suppose the
easiest remedy is simply to replace the 19 ....

Patrick "20 miles on the Fargo today and yep, it's slower than the
Rivs and possibly slower than the trike" Moore -- tho' a good part of
that may be two big Ortlieb Packers catching the SSW 12 g to 17.

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[pb]

On Apr 18, 1:03 pm, Steve Palincsar <palin...@his.com> wrote:

> I'll say it, and I'm definitely not "in denial."  How is a triple
> "difficult"?  Ignore the granny and it's a double.  But unlike a double,
> if you /need/ the lowesst range, it's there.

Ok ... a triple is not "difficult". It is, however, fussier. When I
went 10-speed Ergo in 2001, I also went triple, and I loved it. With
a 34 in front, I could run a 12-23 on the rear in CO, where hilly
paved roads are engineered for icy conditions and are therefore less
steep than in other parts of the country, and I had fabulous gear
selection. As an old friend put it, "I have gears like rich people
have money."

Five years ago I went compact double on everything. My triples -- I
have two of them -- have been sitting on the shelf ever since.
Shifting the front is so much more positive with the doubles. The
need to trim is reduced, I would guess, by 80-90%. But then, as I
said, I'm an Ergo guy. I no longer shift for myself. So to speak. I
have little people in my levers who do that for me. :-) Getting up
the hill is sufficient demand on the little bit of RAAM I have to
offer. (Get it, son? That's a joke, I say, a joke!)

If one enjoys being an expert friction shifter, then one might
actually enjoy the added fussiness of a triple. There you have it.
Chacun a son gout. To each his own. De gustibus non est
disputandum. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Shall we dance?*

~~~

"I'd like to thank all the little people who made this possible..."

*Bonus points for naming the movie.

[Michael Hechmer]

I didn't say it was difficult, I said it was not as easy.  I have been riding doubles and triples with friction shifting for more than 30 years, and feel quite comfortable with both, but the chances of a missed shift with a double are much less than with a triple.  My CD, a 4/30 gives me a low gear of 30, which does fine for almost all unloaded riding for me.  I have two bikes with triples and use them as needed. They provide low gears of 26, or 24 if I want.  On the double I can jam the front shifter around on Vt's rolling hills and never overshift.  With a triple more finesse and attention is needed.  My wife rides a triple all the time and needs it to get up the hill which we live at the bottom of - 1+ mile of 6-8% grade, and our tandem sports a 55/42/26 with a 32 cog in the back.  But that bike takes skill, coordination, and practice to consistently shift smoothly.  Anyone can learn to live with and shift a triple, but it will always require more attention than a double. If you can do it with 100% accuracy, congratulations, you have mastered something that takes more skill than consistently shifting a double.  Whether the system is 7, 8, 9, or 10 speed is irrelevant to FD shifting.  I like the closely spaced gearing of the 9 and it works as well for me as a 7.  I commuted for a whole year, 3000+ miles, with a 3x7 set up.  It worked fine.  I like 2x9 better.

Michael

[Bill M.]

Denial can also be believing that a 30/29 low gear is low enough for all purposes.  I have a 46/30 x 11-32 drivetrain on one bike and like it fine, but it doesn't come close to the 24 x 32 low gear on another bike.  When the grade tops 15%, you bet I use that low gear!

If you want fussy, turn the clock back 25 or 30 years.  Back then I rode a 50/46/28 half step crank with a six speed cassette and friction bar end shifters.  With that setup you were constantly shifting between the outer and middle rings to fine tune gears, and half of the time you needed both front and rear shifts for a small step change.  Worse yet were 1-1/2 step "Alpine" geared drivetrains with shift patterns so complicated folks kept gear charts taped to their handlebars so they could figure out where to shift to next!  Modern drivetrains with nine or ten cogs in back, infrequent front shifts and indexing are a piece of cake.  Even triples.

Bill

Stockton, CA

[Frank Brose]

Joes' advice is great. It's simple stuff. It's like learning to ride a
bike....once you figure it out (and that's not to tough) you just get
better. I prefer it but it's what I learned on and still think it's as
good as it gets. You have to dance on the pedals so to speak. In
fact, given my choice of any type of shifting I could put on a bike,
it would be downtube or bar con friction. Get to know it and I think
you'll enjoy it.

[Zack]

just finished Just Ride, and there is a bunch of good stuff in the book.  if you come across this thread and are looking for more tips/insight, pick up the book!

[Michael Hechmer]

OK, I probably shouldn't post this, but I can't resist.  There's a common topic on the tandem list about people yelling, "Hey fella, she's not pedaling."  label this, she's not shifting.

Two years ago we bought a tandem, and my wife fell in love with it; so much so that, until today, she hadn't ridden her Sequoia  in two years.  We've had a great time on the tandem, riding around the countryside, doing charity rides, and touring in Canada.

 So, after a winter of recovering from surgery, she said she wanted to ride today.  I pulled her 83 Sequoia and my 84 Trek out of the garage.  As I turned out of the driveway I heard her call, "Wait, there's something wrong with my steering."  I went back, checked the wheel and HS and didn't find anything wrong.  But, she said, the handle bars keep moving.  I kept a straight face as she asked me to help her remember  which (BE) shifter did the front and which the back.  As we started out she said she felt like a little kid, and about a quarter mile down the road she called for a stop as there was something wrong with her chain.  This turned out to be that she had gotten herself into the 24/13.

Anyway it took her a solid 5 miles before she remembered how to ride a single bicycle.  By the time we got home she still hadn't figured out how to stop the bike and get out of her toeclips.  (For those of you have never ridden a tandem, the stoker remains clipped in until the pilot has put a foot down & completely clips in with both feet before the pilot pushes off.

So, she is pedaling, she's just not shifting or steering.

Michael

[Zack]

I find this to be relatively amusing:

One of the tips in here was to switch to a compact double.

Well, last week, I was in traffic in our downtown and pushed down with a ton of force to get up to speed really quickly at a green light.  I am a big dude, and I ended up driving my sneaker down into my FD, which ripped the FD downward, right into the big ring on my triple.  what a mess!

i am switching to a compact double as I had to get a new chainring and FD anyways.  good times.

[Michael Hechmer]

Ouch, Zach.  I'm not sure how that can happen.  Did you hit it with your tones pointed in?  You might want to think about a simple toe clip.  I use the Bruce Gordon with the White pedal on my town - errand - touring bike; and like them a lot because they pretty much keep my foot settled while working well with sneakers and easy on & off.  

Michael

[Zack]

Nope, it was my heel.

i hopped up onto the pedal, my heel kind of missed the target (pedal) and found a new target (front derailer).