Friction shifting on modern MTBs?

I’ve been mulling drivetrain issues lately and ended up reading this NSMB article which pushes the case for fitting friction shifting to a more modern MTB.

The cobbled together 1×10 (Deore/Zee) on my stumpy has never been right, and the culprit is the mech (IMO) but I’m loath to spend out on a whole new drivetrain when most of the parts are perfectly functional, and a even a basic newer mech (say a 5100) seems pretty steep for what they are, I’d try one of the new lower cost microshift 1×8/1×9 options but again I’d basically be buying a whole new drivetrain again, essentially just to obtain a mech that’s actually designed for a wider range cassette.

And I’ve got a spare friction shifter that I reckon could be made to work with almost any combination of mech/cassette, so I could get a cheapo advent/acolyte mech, whatever cassette I like and that friction shifter and have a working drive…

So What are people’s thoughts on taking a retrograde step and installing a friction setup on a modern(ish) bike as a bit of an experiment?

I run a friction shifter with a Sram XX1 rear mech on my pizza bike for a few reasons. It doesn’t work – modern mechs and shifters are designed with a much lower cable pull ratio than friction shifters are designed to deal with (1.2 for 10 speed Shimano, 1.1 for 11 speed). As a result, of the seven gears on there I only get four across the full rotation of the shifter. It’s also a very long reach to the lever when you’re at the low end of the cassette that’d be a real pain to deal with on an MTB.

DSC_4055 by Luke Bradley[/url], on Flickr

I started on friction shifters and index shifting was such a great leap forward. I wouldn’t be keen to go back, any more than I’d swap my disks for cantis.

From my original baptism on friction shifters, it’d be hell on an actual moutain bike type route. Possible for a commuter maybe.

I started riding a mountain bike in 1986. There have been no end of improvements since then but I’d be hard pushed to rate any above friction shifting. I can still remember being totally beaten up at the end of a day’s riding and having to grasp the shifter with my hand to change gear as my thumbs hurt too much. Luckily along came the Flexstem and my hands were very thankful. 😊

I have friction on my front mech of the dad /touring bike, I could handle it on the rear mech of this bike but not for me on a mtb. I want snappy changes

Why can’t you just buy a new 10 speed rear mech? Why do you have to buy an entire drive chain if the rear mech is no good?

It doesn’t work – modern mechs and shifters are designed with a much lower cable pull ratio than friction shifters are designed to deal with (1.2 for 10 speed Shimano, 1.1 for 11 speed). As a result, of the seven gears on there I only get four across the full rotation of the shifter.

Interesting, my 1×9 road bike uses an old XT mech (1.7:1) and has plenty of spare throw, it was the same for my Gevenalle (microshift) in friction mode.

I always thought Shimano MTB 10 and 11 both used the same (1.16:1) and just applied the standard Shimano rounding error to pretend they were different, hence you can now buy deore mechs that are sold as both 10 and 11 speed…

Fag packet maths says a 180 degree throw of my lever will pull a shade over 31mm of cable, assuming a conservative ratio of 1.1 that should move a modern MTB mech about ~34.5mm side to side. As it works out I can actually get a bit more than 180 degrees out of it so I should just about be able to pull a modern mech across a 10 speed cassette, in theory at least…

It will probably look a bit ridiculous, but it is still oddly appealing.

I’m calling bullshit on that linked article. For many years I used thumbie mounts for bar end shifters that pre-dated the Paul’s versions (seen here still pulling a front mech about long after I’d chucked the rear in the spares box).

I’m happy on my rigid bike with tubes in the tyres and no dropper post, but I wouldn’t consider going back to friction shifting, and would only consider thumbie-type shifters for a very long and remote ride (and quite possibly not even then).

I’ve gotten along well enough use friction on road and Gravel bikes with 9 and 10 speed, using 10/11 speed chains and obviously more modern era cassettes with shift gates and profiled teeth helps.

I found the idea of using them on a more modern MTB interesting, one thing that does occur is mounting a LH lever on the RH side under the bar a bit like a trigger shifter.

Another idea that occurs to me is to design a bigger diameter friction lever to pull more cable, it wouldn’t be super complex.

Yeah, I used a friction shifter on a 10 speed XT before. It was one of the bar end ones on drop bars (gravel bike.) Worked well, but it takes longer to get ‘just right’ than clicking a few times up and down on a more modern one.

That article reads like someone just wanting to make life hard on himself because modernity = bad. Or something. I just started riding MTB as indexing became a thing, and had only a couple of rides with a friction shifter, but indexing was clearly hugely betterer

Nope.

I tried it on a restored road bike with a 10s cassette. It’s damn near impossible even on a road bike.

Old cassettes from that era had huge square profile teeth and were cut from flat sheets. They held the chain tenaciously. You could flick the lever round and immediately find the gear you were looking for.

Modern hyperglide cassettes are designed to throw of the chain under the slightest sideways pressure. The sweetspot for each gear is therefore incredibly narrow.

What they said. Can’t think of a single reason to do this.

If your all Shimano, all 10sp drivetrain isn’t working, something is bent.

Works ok on my 9 speed commuter, but as per above 10/11/12 speed offroad would get annoying pretty quickly.

I know Andrew at NSMB fairly well and he knows his stuff, including riding ‘normal’ bikes.

As for it ‘not working’ I ran an old 7sp XT shifter in friction mode with a 10sp XT derailleur for poos and giggles and it worked fine. The key (for me) was to drill a hole in the derailleur ‘arm’ to change the amount of cable needed to pull the derailleur. It still bolted in the same spot, but because the cable went through the arm in a different spot, you didn’t have to turn the shift lever 180 degrees to access all the gears. Pretty sure I also ran the shifter on the LH side under the bar like some of did before Rapid Fire came out (thanks Ned Overend for the trick).
I rode on the North Shore mountains where Andrew also rides for a year or so with this set up and it worked OK. Certainly had a hipster vibe going on and I nearly bought a pair of Blundstones after doing this 😉

Friction shifting on the front is simple, even with 3 chainrings. You have ‘all the way’ one direction or the other for top and bottom, plus ‘parallel to the bars’ for the middle ring. Effectively indexing anyway.
However, for the rear thisisnotaspoon has described the problem. Modern cassettes simply don’t work the same way. Even if they did, there are now more cogs and less space between them, which would make finding and staying in gear a fiddly pain in the goobers.
I have a bike with front friction shifting and I have more than one with thumbshifters, but there is no way I would return to un-indexed rear gears.

Literally you should just buy a suitable mech for the wider range 10 speed cassette you have and it should work perfectly.

You’re talking about buying something less good because your current mech is unsuitable for the setup as far as I can tell.

Friction shifters were horrible in my experience – having to get the position actually perfect to stop the chain skipping between teeth – and that was on maybe 7 speed – so with 10 speed and a narrower chain I feel like that would be even more critical.

I had similar “never quite right” with my shimano stuff. Always skipping and noisy. Especially at the slightest hint of grit and dirt. Recently switched to SRAM and tis night and day. Quiet, works, I never know its there doing its job.

However, I did find that with my shimano stuff the KMC chain I was using had a lot to do with it. KMc these days seem utter rubbish.

The 11sp SRaM kmc chain i bought to go on the new 11sp GX mech was too narrow to fit the jockey wheels. i think the slightly different KMC tolerances could have been the issue with shimano kit.

I briefly switched back to a shimano chain on shimano kit and it was a lot better. I’d bought sram mech and shifters by that point.

On KMC I’ve got an x12 nt chain on my 12 speed Gx eagle gear and it’s working well. I find the Sram xx1 chain on my other bike is also great (xt 12 speed cassette / mech / shifter with Sram 12 speed eagle chainring).

The only chain I’ve struggled with on 12 speed is Shimano – which seemed to skip / get noisy when it saw anything like mud / moisture etc. Binned that off after a few months.

Literally you should just buy a suitable mech for the wider range 10 speed cassette you have and it should work perfectly.

You’re talking about buying something less good because your current mech is unsuitable for the setup as far as I can tell.

You’re absolutely right and I know you are, and I keep not quite buying a 5100 mech. And I probably will just end up buying a new mech, but I still fancy trying it with a friction shifter. I think it’s as much my love of unconventional drivetrains as anything, I’ve got two rapid rise mechs, a dual control lever and friction shifting road bike, a Gevenalle lever, an automatic hub and a fixed bike in the fleet… I think it’s as much that my “posh” MTB is boringly conventional as much as anything. Perhaps that’s a good enough reason.

Just had a quick look – the mech is £40 which seems quite cheap vs 12 speed certainly, but even some 11 speed.

It sounds like you’re happy to risk bad / annoying shifting just to be different. If that’s the case then go for it – but don’t moan if it doesn’t work well!

It sounds like you’re happy to risk bad / annoying shifting just to be different. If that’s the case then go for it – but don’t moan if it doesn’t work well!

Absolutely, who wants to be the same as everyone else, I’m a unique special little flower.

M5100 mech has been ordered, I’ll see how well it works with the proper shifter before bolloxing it up with a friction lever.
And I promise not to moan 😉

Yep, ok new mech is approximately a billion percent better. And having functional gears on the thing makes me less inclined to piss about with oddball shifting concepts, I actually want to go out and ride the bastard thing again…

I am now mulling a bigger range cassette though…

If your all Shimano, all 10sp drivetrain isn’t working, something is bent.

Took about 3 minutes to get gears on my mates daughters uni bike working perfectly, after it’d been left in the garden at her digs for 2 years. Deore 10 speed.

She was at uni in Umeå, so when i say it’s been buried in lots of weather, i’m really not kidding…

Brakes were utterly shagged though, new discs, pads and a bleed. Though I don’t think anything would have survived!

I’ve got some Dia Compe road friction levers on Velo Orange mounts kicking around – one went on our youngest’s bike when the Acera 9 speed trigger failed during lockdowns and MTB stuff was like hen’s teeth. He got the hang of it and didn’t complain too much, but it wasn’t ideal.
I think if you’re looking at extreme reliability then friction is a good idea – a pub bike or commuter, or if you want a whacky set up or are on a budget (The Dia Compes were a budget fix from years back) but for day to day? I’d try and count how often you shift in five minutes on a trail. It’s quite a bit (unless you live on Salisbury Plain or Norfolk).

[edit] I just saw someone is selling these for £70 for *one* side. This is not budget – you’d be even bettererer off buying a decent STI pod.

You could try taking every other cog out of a 10 speed cassette.

I think 5 speed was the last time I remember friction shifting not being a total PITA.

Don’t worry I’m back in my box, It’s staying indexed now, because it’s way better with a new mech…

I’ve a spare old Suntour friction shifter that would have been the one I used, the other one is used on my winter/commuter Road bike which is 1×9 and does a grand job, but that’s quite a different application…

Don’t worry I’m back in my box

Yeah, but the problem is now you’ve got me wondering if it would work 🙂

“Modern hyperglide cassettes are designed to throw of the chain under the slightest sideways pressure. The sweetspot for each gear is therefore incredibly narrow.”

I run Shimano thumb friction shifts front and rear, on a XT cassette. I have no problems at all with it and really enjoy using them, however my bike is used for road or off road tracks and paths, not high speed cross country runs.

My reason is I love quiet bikes, so was careful over hub choices too when building up the frame. I get a kick out of lining up the gear choice perfectly and being able to do fast sweeping gear changes across multiple cogs with one swipe of the leaver.

I have 3 other bikes with indexed gears, both flat bar and drops, but I love the friction change the best when terrain is appropriate. Its so satisfying. Its my favourite bike.

Bar end shifter converters for flat bars, complete with 7 & 8 speed shifters! Flick effortlessly between index and friction mode! Go on, you know you want them…