I have not thought this through 😳

My commuter’s an ancient mountain bike, it’s got 7-speed mtb shifters of some sort- altus I think. But it’s undergeared so I’m throwing a road crankset onto it. It’ll fit, but, the odds of my 90s exage mtb front mech playing well with a road double seem… slim.

So, any advice? I can see it working with a road front mech since all the control will be done by the end stops. But it might make sense to replace the shifter. (as long as it’s cheap!).

Single ring obviously works and I think I’ll start there but it’d be nice to have some shifting.

A shimano road mech should work fine. An mtb one with a non-compact double road chainset may be workable too.

Cool, was a bit worried about the cable pull with the old and new, I’ll give it a crack and just see what happens. Ta!

Your mtb front mech may work too – if it was early enough to be 48T.

If you can cope with [going back to] friction mode, a set of Dura-Ace BL7700 9spd bar-end shifters are your new best friends – they will pretty much shift everything without necessarily matching anything (in my experience 😉 ), always assuming you get the mech’s capacity right of course. They’ll sit happily on ‘thumbies’ for use on flat / alt bars as well.

They have become my shifter of choice these days, given the versatility they offer in mixing all kinds of stuff up.

(Just as an example … 😉 … my last/most recent build was using BL7700’s with: an old Shimano/Sugino 7spd road double (39/52), a new Ultegra 6603 10spd triple f-mech, an HG93 chain, a 9spd 12-28 cassette, and an Ultegra 6600SGS on the back, and it works really nicely on friction-mode. All it took was a bit of fiddling on the mech-stops and that was that).

When I got this bike it was the first one in my school with indexing on both ends. So as a matter of pride I think it has to stay SIS’d to the max. (the same did not apply to the flexstem)

Al- not entirely sure, I think the front mech’s a later replacement. It’s quite a shallow cage but I suppose that doesn’t really mean much. But hey, the plus side of having shifted one of my proper bikes to 1×10 means I’ve got an SLX double mech and shifter in the garage if it comes to that.

Tomorrow night there will be shitbike fettling, cheers folks. Think the chainset will approximately double the value.

gripshifter ?

(I might have an antique x-ray LH one somewhere, if you insist on mismatched retro bollocks)

Nah, under-bar numbers- fairly recent replacements from woolyhatshop. No concours concerns for an ancient rusty hammerited carrera 🙂

If you have a 48T on there and the mech fits it then it’s worth a go on the road one which I presume is a 52?

I think it has a 42 or a 44 fitted currently, not 100% sure. I’ll give it a crack though anyway.

I run 8spd sti with 7 speed cassette on a road bike.

Not perfect but it works. Sheldon said it would be ok..