Dear god, please save friction shifting! Part 1

Backdrop

In the early 1900's the derailleur as we know it came into inception and inevitably its own fruition shortly there after.  The abilities and interface for the bicycle rider was forever changed with a device that conveniently, and often times not as much, moved the chain from one cog to another This was the advent of the derailleur.  Standard became the outfitting of bicycles with shifting mechanisms and derailleurs to actuate gear change, enabling riders to navigate roads of all terrain and elevation with relative ease.  It seems easy for one to posit an argument that a golden age of bicycle design was that of the early to mid 19th century and that what followed in the wake of advances as described previously would give rise to a plethora of cross-compatibility, time tested reliability, and ease of serviceability. What follows is a post that touches on bicycle industry standards, planned obsolescence and marketing gimmicks as much as it does the simple devices that are the friction derailleur and shifter which blessed the bicycle market for more than half of the last century.



Here we have a well used and functioning (to this day seeing miles) offering from the now defunct component manufacturer Suntour.  A beautifully designed, simple in nature and incredibly light weight piece of kit that graced many a high end road bike of the 80's.


The year is 1968 and Suntour, or Madea industries as often branded, has revolutionized gear shifting by inventing the slanted, single pivot, parallelogram rear derailleur.  This simple yet effective refinement in design dominated the industry until 1988 (patent expiration) and paved the way for inspiration and blatant carbon copying alike.  Gear shifting was crisp, consistent and predictable with the slanted parallelogram derailleur coupled with consistently incremental steps in gear selection.

Suntours GT derailleur geometry.  The slanted parallelogram
design that is principle in all modern derailleurs to this day 

As Suntour and others continued to refine geometry and basic design principles of their wide selection of derailleurs for decades to follow, the market experienced a massive influx and overabundance of rear mechanisms, and thus today the bicycle market has become flooded with discarded, forgotten, and carefully stashed n.o.s (new old stock) derailleurs.  A quick search on ebay or craigslist will overwhelm buyers with options spanning the latter part of the last decade.  For not much more than 10 to 30$ one can have what is in most cases a near perfectly shifting derailleur.  With a modern counterpart costing upwards of 2 to 6 times as much in price,  the price difference in and of itself should easily encourage buyers to take a step toward the previous, and away from the latter.  This simply is not the case generally speaking, and the reason seems to be threefold.

Index Shifting

In 1984 the super-giant component manufacturer Shimano refined and patented what would soon become a universal concept for virtually all bicycle shifting components to follow.  The design was called the S.I.S (Shimano index system) and allowed users to shift from one gear to another with a definitively audible and equally felt "CLICK" that engaged gear shifts and locked the shifter and derailleur into the users gear selection.  Although Shimano can never claim pioneer status with regards to index shifting, it did serve as the biggest proponent of the time, as well as marketing and manufacturing an image and interface that became reputable worldwide.  Suntour was the first to counter with their own version of indexing and soon after the Italian manufacturing counterpart Campagnolo followed with its own unique iteration. With this seemingly overnight component shake up, all index shifting platforms came with new sprocket spacing and cog width, as well as new pull ratios for the corresponding shifter/derailleur combination(the amount of travel achieved in the derailleur body relative to movement in the shifting mechanisms).  Convenient and confidence inspiring this new style of shifter/derailleur combination was, it inevitably paved the way for the negation of virtually all friction shifter actuated rear mechanisms and shifting units.





Another robust and elegant offering from Suntour.  This was one of the last all-friction actuated thumb shifters of the late 80's and benefited from the time tested ratcheting function that made Suntour shifters so sought after.  Still used, still shifting flawlessly. 



The grupo and planned obsolescence

In the 1960's Campagnolo's think tank conjured up what is commonly referred to as the "grupo".  The idea is that one can purchase a full outfit (drivetrain, brake set, cockpit, necessary bearings, ect) to dress their newest bicycle frame acquisition.  Prior to the grupo, if one were to have a bicycle frame and fork but lack componentry and wished to build up their steed, they would have to selectively piece together the bits necessary.  The lack of uniformity gave rise to many a bicycle outfitted with sometimes Japanese, French, Italian and American components all at the same time.  Although there was nothing inherently wrong with this Frankenstein-esc approach to bicycle assembly, but from a marketing standpoint there was a massive void in the industry that Tullio Campagnolo was quick to fill.  Fast forward four decades and enter a new millennium with the groupo concept exemplified massively by all the big component manufacturers.  The big difference this time around is that not only are shifting components from previous or later iterations often incompatible with one another due to reasons listed previously, but as the bicycle industry moved in the direction of "more is better" in terms of gearing (8,9,10 and even 11 rear gears) it obfuscated almost every generation of componentry other than that of its own.  To shift with Shimano 9 speed derailleurs one needs a 9 speed shifter offered only by Shimano to make corresponding gear shifts.  If for example you find yourself destroying the shifter of your favorite older generation 7 speed setup, finding a compatible shifter from the same company, and same generation, is not far from pulling teeth in the sense that product support for such "dated" products is nearly non-existent today.  Sure, there are many do it yourself alternatives out there for the tinkerer, but most of these approaches require sourcing older second hand components or heavy modification to work.  The simple fact of the matter is that the year to year basis of "progression" in the bicycle industry is not much more than planned obsolescence in the guise of the latest fill in the blank marketing strategy.  Seldom do we see new design come from the "Big Players" that actually improves product from years prior and does not lock the buyer into brand and groupo specific submission.  If having an 8,9,10,or 11 speed product from Shimano, Sram or Campagnolo means that we are limited to having respective 8,9,10, or 11 speed products only, wouldn't stepping away altogether not be the perfect rebuttal to the slap in the face marketing strategies that we have been victim to for so long now in the bicycle industry?  The logical conclusion here would be to ask yourself how exactly this can be achieved within reason.  In part 2 this question will hopefully be answered in adequacy.