People who have friction shifters, can you share your experience about chain rub and the number of speeds?
I am considering the Growtac friction shifting lever, but i am worried i will experience chain rub and would like to set it with a cassette that would minimise this.
My intuition is that you can adjust the cable pull with the lever, so that you move the derailleur not to rub the chain.
But my intuition fails on what speed n. is best to do this. I feel that on 10s the cogs have bigger distances, so it should be easier to move the derailer that tiny bit to one side. On the 12s i feel that the number of cogs will cause the chain naturally to "sit" in some of them, minimizing the rub altogether.
GPT is saying that 12s is worse than 10s (comparing it to smaller parking space, but I don't trust that thing)
What are your experiences with friction shifting regarding chain rub on different speed cassettes?
Edited my horrible grammar.
by Sofiner
6 Comments
If you are getting chainrub on a friction setup, it’s a user error.
I run 2 Microshift Bar End Shifters on a 3*10 setup. Right shifter (cassette) is indexed, left shifter (chainrings) is friction.
I love being able to adjust the front derailleur to not chainrub, it gives me more adjustment on the go.
As for the rear derailleur, I couldn’t imagine having friction shifting on there. You swap gears so often and to do those microajustments every time just seems off and not worth the trouble.
When adjusting the front derailleur I use sound to hear if it’s rubbing or not. But because I don’t swap that one often I can ride with earbuds in and stuff, with the back you’d always need to hear i’d imagine
I have a 10sp friction setup with bar end shifters and it works well. Rub is user error as mentioned in another comment and can be eliminated/assisted away. Keep chain and cassette relatively clean and you’re good.
I also had this bike set up in 11sp at one point and it actually seemed even better for rub and gear selection than with 10 but I made the switch to 10 for other reasons.
Friction kicks ass.
It is easier to adjust for rub with fewer cogs on the cassette because the gaps between cogs are larger. It is not difficult to adjust for rub with any number of cogs if you’ve got friction shifters.
I have Shimano 2×11 with 50/34t crankset and 11-42t rear cassette with a Deore rear derailleur and a repurposed Campy Chorus fd. I am using Microshift bar end shifters in friction mode. On my very first ride, it took about 30 minutes to get used to the lever movement needed for clean shifting on the rear cogs. By the 2nd ride, it was natural. The old Chorus fd works great. Having friction for the fd is nice for adjusting at the extreme ranges. I suppose I could switch to indexing, but I like the no-worry feature of friction.
I love my Growtac friction shifter. I have it on a 12 speed and it gets into place really easy. It took about a week to get into the flow of it but now I will never go back to index.