Secret Alternative Shifter Setup!

so today we're gonna get bike nerdy and i'm gonna share with you guys an alternative way to set up thumb shifters on your bike i've been having a total blast with the hard tack and i've been moving components around until it reaches its final form one change i did recently on this bike just to make it slightly easier to get to the shifter is that i took what normally would be the left shifter put it on the right side and mounted it upside down i know i know that sounds really confusing let me show you on the different bike what the end goal was so this is the rivendell suzy longbolt by the way this method of setting up the shifter has generally been attributed to rivendell and what it does basically is instead of having the thumb shifter up here where you're shifting across the top of the lever it places the shifter here so really natural position with your hand your hand is on the brake and on the shifter at the same time one nice thing about this setup is you get a lot more leverage when you're pushing it against the rear derailleur i know it looks a little confusing at first but in actual use it's really smooth and once you get used to it i much prefer it than having to go like this my thumb rather than like pushing down and having kind of a total control over everything this is my velo orange polyvalent and i've also applied the same thing again with a rivendell shifter super comfy position it basically mimics kind of what you would get with the modern trigger shifter where it's mounted below in this situation this is shifting to a harder gear and this is shifting to a easier gear one kind of real advantage of this setup is since you're running friction on occasion sometimes the friction of the shifter can be overcome wanting the rear derailleur to jump into a harder gear when you have the shifter down here and let's say you're standing and climbing it's much easier to cover that gear with your thumb so it won't accidentally slip on you if you're you know standing and climbing and putting a lot of torque and it protects you from that sudden shift into a harder gear if you have a non-rapid rise rear derailleur so this is what it looks like currently on the hardtack so again this is the thumb shifter that would typically move a front derailleur but instead it's on the right side and flipped upside down to activate the rear derailleur so as you can see it's a pretty easy motion to go into a lower gear to go into a harder gear you can pull at it like this instead of pushing with your thumb you pull with your two fingers and this will move it into a harder gear for a non-rapid rise trailer and again a lower gear like this as you can see when you're standing and climbing you can keep your thumb here just so it won't just so the gears won't slip beneath you there are a few downsides to doing this setup however if you take a look at a typical thumb shifter design for the rear derailleur this one is made by microshift and it has a really long throw so it will work with modern 11 and 12 speed derailleurs things like sram eagle enough cable pull to drag a mountain bike derailer all the way across a cassette this is what would typically be the shifter for the front derailleur when you buy them as a pair and front derailleurs haven't seen a whole lot of evolution so i don't think the cable pull has really changed since like the nine speed days what i found with my experimentation so far is that you can get enough cable pull to shift a 9 or 10 speed rear derailleur typically but not enough to shift a modern one by mountain bike cassette across the entire range okay so for example here on the rib this is an older shimano xt i believe for nine speed and it's a rapid rise rear derailleur this is my heart attack again a dior uh nine speed rear derailleur and this is actually a 10-speed cassette uh 11 to 42. i just put this on yesterday prior to this i had an 11 to 40 in 11 speeds and that still worked great it wasn't so much the number of cogs but kind of the design of the derailleur that was limiting the front uh shifter this is my polyvalent and the front riv shifter has enough pull to work with the advent x rear trailer again this is a 10 speed rear derailleur a couple of other interesting challenges when you want to set the shifter up like this is that typically speaking it's a lot easier to buy just the right shifter and the only way to get the left shifter to run it upside down is you have to get the pair so if you're if you're running a double then that's great but if you are doing it as just a 1 by then it kind of sucks because you have to get the double to get the left shifter to run upside down in terms of what options you have out there there's microshift it works great the left shifter in the pair for microchip actually has a little micro ratchet in one direction so it's actually a better friction shifter than its right shifter if that makes sense when you set the right shifter into friction there's no ratchet it's literally kind of the strength of the top cap compressing everything that creates that friction but the front thumb shifter actually has a ratchet and works better and only in friction other options if you want to do a setup like this is of course rivendell they sell their silver shifters and those work great i've not tried it with an eagle rear derailleur i know it works with the advent x i may put an eagle rear derailleur on the polyvalent just to see if it'll pull it throughout the whole range i suspect it won't but if you guys have tried otherwise let me know in the comments below and and lastly the other shifter i can think of the top of my head is those uh any cyclo diacomp thumb shifters um those work great but i don't know for sure if the left shifter has enough pull to pull like an eagle rear derailleur i tested those shifters on the crest lightning bolt and they worked awesome in kind of regular mode really long levers by the way so you get a ton of leverage i know what you're thinking you know is it worth the hassle but when i first heard about it it sounded like some just weird hipster thing to do but but after trying it with multiple bikes and setting it up on this bike i think ergonomically it actually feels better i feel like pushing your thumb down you get more force and it puts less strain on your thumb also in this position your hand your fingers generally have a better access to the break and like i said you can also cover the shifter to prevent an accidental upshifter or downshift hopefully you found this video helpful and that you learned something new and interesting today if you did please consider supporting the channel by joining us on patreon or by visiting our store and buying some stickers and some new bandanas and stuff this channel has no major sponsorship we rely on three things patreon kind of sad adsense that we get a month as well as merch sales there's no big corporation you know big friction isn't writing us a check every month to make these videos so if you want to see more weird stuff that other bike channels won't cover you know what to do and as always keep the supple side down

Channel: Path Less Pedaled

Views: 67,698

Keywords: bicycle touring, bikepacking, bicycle, travel, tourism, ride, adventure cycling, pathlesspedaled, the path less pedaled, bike touring, bikepacking gear, bike gearing, roadslikethese, gravelspecific, partypace, gravel bike

Id: EfLQpdfkw8s

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2022