Quote:
Originally Posted by creekster
Didn't shiamno have friction thumb shifters? I am pretty sure they and Suntour had them. In fact, I think one of the many bikes in my garage has them on the handlebars. Plus, firciton shifting isn't so bad. Once you got to know your bike well, you could almost always hit the gear without messing around much, if at all.
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I don't know anything about the evolution of shifters in early mountain biking. When I got into mountain biking a dozen years ago, my bike had the grip-shift indexed twist shifters. I guess if I had to use a friction shift back then, I probably would have given up. Or maybe just set a gear at the start of a technical climb and never changed it until I hit the top. Practically like riding a fixie?
Come to think of it, there are a lot of climbs where I just stay in one gear from bottom to top, but there are plenty of others where it's nice to have fast, accurate shifts.