regarding the defunct rapid rise derailers and those anti-handlebar-flop doohickeys.

[Rick]

A year or more ago, my rambunctious golden retrievers knocked over the
Atlantis, which was politely drying in the afternoon sun after a nice
bath. The derailer hanger bent, and it totaled my original derailer,
which was the now-discontinued rapid rise version. I admonished the
dogs, and substituted with shimano's current high normal equivalent,
consoling myself with the thought that I'd adjust to pulling my silver
shifters up to go to a lower gear, just as I had quickly gotten used
to pushing down for same when that reverse action came around.

I never did. Maybe the little fellow needed some fine tuning, but my
real objection was, I suspect, somewhat more conceptual: lifting that
shifter up to ascend to a higher gear had come to make more sense
somehow. (That, and I still have one of the rapid rise fellows on the
bleriot, so I wasn't able to completely block out the past
experience.)

So, through the magik of the intertubes, I procured and mounted the
rapid rise model back on the Atlantis. The difference is remarkable
for me, and I am most happy with my reversion to the reverse-action. I
suppose I should get some more before the ether swallows all
examples.

That having been said, I have a question on another, tangentially-
related subject: when at rest, Atlantis sits on a two-legged
kickstand, and with a decent load pops a static wheelie. On a sloping
surface, those handlebars swing round with a vengeance, and if the
rear load's uneven, the resulting weight shift threatens to topple
all.

So -- what do you call/where can I get one of those rotation-limiting
devices that prevent the full swing-around on the bars? I've seen
them in photos posted by a couple of you touring types, I believe.
And maybe I should lop several centimeters off the kickstand legs to
decrease the wheelie effect?

Rick.

[Tom M]

This? http://store.velo-orange.com/index.php/accessories/vo-wheel-stabilizer.html 

[Allingham II, Thomas J]

One device is called a Hebie something or other -- here's a pic of one mounted on a Trek hybrid. A very similar device is here at VO: http://store.velo-orange.com/index.php/accessories/vo-wheel-stabilizer.html. $10!

Rick.

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[Leslie]

I seem to recall that G&Co were looking at removing and putting the rear-der spring back on, to convert normals to reverse...

Anything come of that??


-L

[Bill Gibson]

Toe strap.  Or,  http://www.rivbike.com/product-p/m3.htm My John's Irish Straps have held heavy loads, so the wheel flop factor will not faze 'em.

Rick.

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Tempe, Arizona, USA

[PATRICK MOORE]

FWIW, I replaced the VO 2-leg stand (which IME worked better than the
twice-as-expensive Pletscher -- the legs spread wider) with a cheap
Greenfield rear dropout mount stand after my grocery bike kept falling
over with any large rear load. It looked uglier but it worked much
better, even, oddly enough, with one or the other pannier much
overloaded. An incidental benefit was that I could leave the stand
down when wheeling the bike through the grocery store and park it
whenever I needed to investigate an item more closely instead of
having to find something to lean the bike against and likely as not
knocking askew some display.

The VO stand went on my daughter's bike, so she has the only pink, 24"
wheel Electra Townie 3i in the world with a VO 2-leg stand.

I rather miss the reverse action LX rd that came with my erstwhile Sam
Hill and later migrated to the Fargo. I've not used any modern (ie,
post 8 speed; and most far earlier) rd except that one, but that one
was the smoothest and most precise shifting rd I've ever used. I
swapped it out for an 8 sp XT because I could not stand the reverse
action, but the XT is far less precise, especially pulling the chain
over the bastardized cogsets I build out of odds and sods. However,
the Silver shifters do help mitigate the finickiness.

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Rick <richard...@yahoo.com> wrote:

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Albuquerque, NM
For professional resumes, contact
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[Rex Kerr]

Interesting... I didn't want to have one bike be the odd man out, so I opted NOT to buy my r-d from Riv (sorry guys!) in order to get a traditional high-normal setup to match my other bikes.  The test rides were a problem as I kept shifting into a higher gear at stop signs.   I'm surprised that you had such a hard time finding rapid rise, as I was under the impression that was the general direction that they were going.

As for the wheel flop, I put one of those spring loaded things that VO sells (the one that Tom linked to) on my Trek... it definitely made parking the bike MUCH nicer, but it's ugly, affects steering (you get used to it), and wanted to interfere with my fender, but I finally won that battle.

[Joe Bunik]

FWIW, and perhaps on a lark, I opted to test the rapid rise r.d.
waters on my recent Legolas build:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joe_bunik/6630325529/

picked up a used set of XTR fd/rd, and have to say they is like
buttah... I have not had any problems with confusion while shifting...
=- Joe Bunik
Walnut Creek, CA

[GeorgeS]

I'm really glad to see this discussion about the Shimano RD's. Some
years ago I bought a used Atlantis from Tom Hill at Hyawatha. When I
started riding the bike I was disconcerted by the fact that the
deraileurs worked the opposite from what I was used to. Pushing the
levers away resulted in thing springing to a bigger gear. I thought
of changing the mechanism to solve the "problem" but I'm lazy, the
thing worked fine, so I just adapted. I probably ride the Atlantis
more, day in day out, than any of my other bikes. So, what does one
call the reverse action deraileur? Do I understand from the thread
that Shimano has dropped this device from the line-up or is it the
opposite? This is probably the kind of thing that I should know w/o
asking but most of my bikes are vintage things with relatively crude
shifting mechanisms. In my defense, however, I do know a lot about
Cambio Corsa shifters.
GeorgeS

[Steve Palincsar]

On Sat, 2012-02-04 at 03:45 -0800, GeorgeS wrote:
> I'm really glad to see this discussion about the Shimano RD's. Some
> years ago I bought a used Atlantis from Tom Hill at Hyawatha. When I
> started riding the bike I was disconcerted by the fact that the
> deraileurs worked the opposite from what I was used to. Pushing the
> levers away resulted in thing springing to a bigger gear. I thought
> of changing the mechanism to solve the "problem" but I'm lazy, the
> thing worked fine, so I just adapted.

Bad decision. You have adapted, and you are now screwed.

> I probably ride the Atlantis
> more, day in day out, than any of my other bikes. So, what does one
> call the reverse action deraileur?

Ass backwards.

> Do I understand from the thread
> that Shimano has dropped this device from the line-up

Yes.

[Bruce Herbitter]

It's "Bass Ackwards"  

And he's been assimilated, I guess he bought into "Resistance is futile."

[Bill Carter]

Patrick writes:
"An incidental benefit was that I could leave the stand
down when wheeling the bike through the grocery store and park it
whenever I needed to investigate an item more closely instead of
having to find something to lean the bike against and likely as not
knocking askew some display."

You roll the bike around the store with you while you shop? You do
indeed march to a different drummer. How's that work with the trike?

Bill

[grant]

It turned out to be (naturally) one of those "a miss is as good as a
mile" things. One tiny mump-with-groove thing missing where it needs
to be. So...full of naive boyish hope and expectation, I asked
MicroShift--in person, there at MSHQ, sitting down at a table, whether
they could make 'em that way for us, and we'd buy 400. He said
something like, "Nice try, but that would take ten thousand dollars in
tooling, lots of development time, and we could make your year's
supply in one productive afternoon."

I used to hear that a lot in the '90s, but our seeming legitimacy and
webby presence and rep have since gotten us stuff we never could have
gotten back then (tires, rims, pedals..). Still to small for special
derailers, though.

Too bad Shimano quit 'em. I'm half-and-halfing now (on my bikes), and
it's not a mass of confusion. Last week I think I mis-shifted only
about thirty times, but fortunately, spent a total of about twenty-
five seconds correcting.

[Rick]

Thanks all. I remember reading something from shimano about the rapid
rise's functionality, how instead of fighting the spring tension to
shift the rapid rise's reverse action allowed for a more natural
movement to the larger or smaller cogs. I'm sure someone somewhere
would dispute this, but it certainly feels better to me, and I do wish
they would have stuck it out. It seemed to get some support from the
mountain bike people, but so it goes.

Also, thanks for the wheel-stabilizer thing on the VO site. It's a bit
bigger than I remembered it, and Though I'm not super ultra finicky
about aesthetics when a necessary solution is at hand, it ain't
pretty. Instead of just adding more parts, I may readjust/reassess my
current parts, as Patrick suggests.

[EricP]

I have reverse rise on two of my three bikes and don't have any
problems switching. (He says while whistling and fingers crossed
behind back.) Doesn't reall take any time to mentally switch between
the bikes. I don't find it to be limiting.

Then again, the two bikes that have reverse rise shifters also have V-
brakes, so maybe my likes are a bit out of the mainstream.

Eric Platt
St. Paul, MN

[Bertin753]

With the trike I have to shove people out of the way. Actually, I only wheel the trike in when a store is quiet: otherwise I leave it outside. The other night I was wheeling it thru the aisles of the nearby Alberson's and the manager showed a great interest I it -- where from, how much, etc. I do use the bikes as grocery trolleys in two Albertson's where they know me well, but at another, more crowded store with narrower aisles I leave a lock at their rack.

Patrick Moore
iPhone

[Bertin753]

Not fighting the spring -- I wonder if that accounts for the smooth and precise shifting?

Patrick Moore
iPhone

[Steve Palincsar]

On Sun, 2012-02-05 at 05:52 -0800, EricP wrote:
> I have reverse rise on two of my three bikes and don't have any
> problems switching. (He says while whistling and fingers crossed
> behind back.)

For me it depends on the shifters. If the shifters work totally
differently, no conflict at all; but if the shifters work the same,
confusion reigns. In fact, I used to use backwards-acting SunTour front
derailleurs from the mid-1970s until around 1995, and even today I still
occasionally make a mistake and shift the front in the wrong direction.

[Allingham II, Thomas J]

Agreed on the wheel stabilizer thing. I put one on a bike I built for my son because of the aggressive front wheel flop, but I'm probably going to take it off and hunt for another solution. It's not attractive.

-----Original Message-----
From: rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com [mailto:rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2012 8:13 AM
To: RBW Owners Bunch

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[Ryan Ray]

I love my LX Rapid rise. Mostly during that "oh no this hill is steep" moment I feel the rapid rise shifts better. Quiet, smooth shifts even uphill. One downside: when I was messing around with the indexed setting on my 8 speed bar-ends it was super finicky. Seemed like the indexed bar-ends has rapid rise issues. Not sure.