Galaxy upgrades
alfi
Posts: 3
Newbie chaseing some info, i have just bought my wife a dawes Galaxy and it is a ladies version circa 1986 i beleive. very nice it is but i want to replace gears shifters crankset ect. i will be changing the shifters because she wants straight bars with the controls fitted to the bars. The rear wheel accomodates a 5 speed cassete which i want to bring up to a 6 with perhaps 3 chainwheels instead of 2. The spaceing between the dropouts looks to be 120mm at a quick measure. Has anyone any advice on where to go and what to kit to buy, i will of course keep all the existing kit tjust in case i want to put the bike back to origanal.
cheers
Tony
cheers
Tony
0
Comments
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Best bet would be some old friction shifters. You should be able to fit a 6 speed freewheel to the old wheels. Check the handlebar stem diameter also. Most flat bars are now 25.4mm.0
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Thanks for the info0
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The easiest and probably cheapest way to do this is to get an old mountain bike which has a 6 speed freewheel and cantilever brakes. You can the transfer over the bars, stem, shifters (could be twistgrip), brake levers and all the cables without even dismantling anything.
Personally I wouldn't use the MTB chainset, but either stick with the original or get a lighter and narrower compact road double or a road triple. The front gear changer won't be indexed, so you could use it with either.
The main problem you will have in getting bar mounted gears, however you do it, is that in place of the downtube shifters you need to have some bosses which the outer gear cable from the gear shifter sits in and the inner passes through on its way to the mech. If you look at modern road bikes with STI shifters they will have something like this on the downtube (ergobosses), MTBs have welded on bosses of the right type. I've not yet found a shop that sells them as a standalone aftermarket component, so I have flat bars and downtube shifters. If you find some somewhere, or work out an effective bodge - please post and let us know!.0 -
I got a pair of down tube cable bosses from Brixton Cycles when I was building me Surly Pacer. They had them in stock.0
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The problem is that this type only work if your bike has the square braze ons on the downtube to fit them on to.
Older (pre-indexing) bikes don't have them, the downtube shifters are clamped to the frame and if you remove the shifters from the clamp what you are left with isn't the right shape to fit these cable bosses to.
You could do it with something like drilling a hole in a small right angled bracket which would take a brake cable adjuster or gear index adjuster and then clamping it to the frame with a jubilee clip. This offends my aesthetic sensibiliites though, so I'm waiting until I find something neater. I've rummaged round the parts bin for various brackets that might be able to be adapted - the sort of thing which fastens accessories to the frame, bike pumps, locks, bottle cages etc - but haven't come up with anything yet.
If anyone out there has an old bike with 'gut rippers' on, perhaps you could have a look and tell us how they've done it.0 -
