Rob English geeks out on generations of not running components in stock form.
Before the introduction and eventual domination of electronic shifting, there was a time where all kinds of hybrid groupsets could be put together, with lots of tricks and hacks discoverable for those who like to tinker.
This began for me with my original 1991 Stumpjumper which came with a stock Shimano XT 21-speed groupset. It wasn’t long before I removed the inner chainring to go 2×7. Then, because of the extra ‘hidden’ position of the thumbshifter, I switched to an 8-speed freehub body, and fitted an aftermarket 32T aluminium cog behind the 7 speed 12-28 cassette to get a super-wide range (ha!) with 2×8.
Square-taper bottom brackets and cranksets allowed for adjusting the chainline, pretty much every front derailleur was compatible with any shifter, and so mix-and-matching was easy – John Tomac could even run the early drop-bar STI levers with mountain bike derailleurs.
The ability to combine parts from different manufacturers and periods continued to be fairly easy through the 9- and 10-speed eras – as a student bike racer on a budget I put together a groupset with a mixture of Shimano Dura-Ace and Campagnolo Chorus and Record that ended up lighter and cheaper than doing any of them complete. And there were lots of tricks and combinations that would work – for example, I much prefer Campagnolo Ergopower shifters, but had wheels with Shimano freehubs and cassettes. It was very satisfying to find the hacks – 10-speed Ergopower will shift a Shimano 9-speed derailleur and cassette with the cable clamp reversed. Those same shifters will also directly shift a SRAM 10-speed derailleur over a Shimano or SRAM 10-speed cassette. There were lots of choices for alternative cranks and chainrings, and they typically all worked fine as long as the number of speeds was +/- 1. And pretty much any road front derailleur could be used with any shifter.
But as things moved into the 11-speed era, each component manufacturer went more specific with the pairing of their parts – front derailleur activation arms got longer and had to be used with the correct shifter for the right cable pull, shift ramps for chainrings meant they really needed to be paired and spaced precisely. Road and mountain bike cable pull ratios deviated, making it much more difficult to install wide range gearing on a drop-bar bike – especially with the triple crank being phased out. On the plus side, shifting performance got better and more precise. Those of us who came up through friction shifting and pre-Hyperglide (Shimano’s ramped cassette technology) are used to easing off the chain tension and maybe finessing the shifter a little (the old half-tap on the Ergopower lever). The level of integration and precision of the evolved groupsets meant this skill was mostly left in the past.
Did we do a good job with this story?
Click Here For The Original Source.
