Gaining More Gears On Old 7 Speed
I know this has been asked several times so I just wanted to share my own experience on the matter.
I got back into cycling about 3 years ago after a long break and with increased age, reduced fitness and vastly larger waistline I found my old 7 speed (downtube shifter) set up with smallest gear of 42 x 21 a bit of a struggle on the hills to say the least! Whilst I did buy a new bike with 9 speed gearing giving me much lower gear options I also wanted to use the old bike for training. I could have just gone for a more widely spaced 7 speed cassette but don't like big ration jumps if I can avoid it or I could have gone the whole hog and had the (steel) frame cold formed to take a wider 9 / 10 speed hub together with fitting combined gear / brake levers but this would have been pricey.
In the end and after much reading here and on other forums I opted to buy a new 10 speed cassette (11-28) and narrow 10 speed chain. By removing the 11t sprocket from the cassette I then ended up with a 9 speed cassette that fitted the original 7 speed hub and by putting my old Ultegra 600 downtube shifters into friction mode everything worked well giving me an 18 speed setup at fairly low cost. However, my 20 year old shifters broke last winter and I wanted to get indexing on the bike if I could so I have just finished fitting Dura Ace 10 speed downtube shifters plus a new 105 rear mech(the springs were giving up on the original Ultegra mech). This now allows me to have smooth indexed 9 speed gearing on the rear with the mech wound in to block off the non-existant 10th sprocket.
I used the bike with this new setup yesterday for the first time and despite the mis-matched drive train on the bike (Veloce chainset, Chorus front mech, SRAM 10 speed chain, Ultegra 10 speed cassette, 105 rear mech and those Dura Ace downtube shifters) the gear changes were the smoothest I have had on a bike which I put down to the shifters. It was far nicer changing gear than on my best bike which is equipped with Sora brifters but the same 105 rear mech.
The total cost for this excluding the new rear mech, which only had to be changed as it was broken, was:-
Dura Ace 10 speed downtube shifters - £50 (I couldn't find any other 10 speed downtube shifters on the market but these are certainly worth the price)
Ultegra 10 speed cassette - £40
SRAM 10 speed chain - £15
I think for a spend of just over £100 it was well worth it to get lower gearing without big ratio differences in the mid / larger gears and end up with 18 beautifully smooth gears rather than the previous 14, it's certainly a worthwhile and simple route for anyone who finds themselves in the same situation.
I got back into cycling about 3 years ago after a long break and with increased age, reduced fitness and vastly larger waistline I found my old 7 speed (downtube shifter) set up with smallest gear of 42 x 21 a bit of a struggle on the hills to say the least! Whilst I did buy a new bike with 9 speed gearing giving me much lower gear options I also wanted to use the old bike for training. I could have just gone for a more widely spaced 7 speed cassette but don't like big ration jumps if I can avoid it or I could have gone the whole hog and had the (steel) frame cold formed to take a wider 9 / 10 speed hub together with fitting combined gear / brake levers but this would have been pricey.
In the end and after much reading here and on other forums I opted to buy a new 10 speed cassette (11-28) and narrow 10 speed chain. By removing the 11t sprocket from the cassette I then ended up with a 9 speed cassette that fitted the original 7 speed hub and by putting my old Ultegra 600 downtube shifters into friction mode everything worked well giving me an 18 speed setup at fairly low cost. However, my 20 year old shifters broke last winter and I wanted to get indexing on the bike if I could so I have just finished fitting Dura Ace 10 speed downtube shifters plus a new 105 rear mech(the springs were giving up on the original Ultegra mech). This now allows me to have smooth indexed 9 speed gearing on the rear with the mech wound in to block off the non-existant 10th sprocket.
I used the bike with this new setup yesterday for the first time and despite the mis-matched drive train on the bike (Veloce chainset, Chorus front mech, SRAM 10 speed chain, Ultegra 10 speed cassette, 105 rear mech and those Dura Ace downtube shifters) the gear changes were the smoothest I have had on a bike which I put down to the shifters. It was far nicer changing gear than on my best bike which is equipped with Sora brifters but the same 105 rear mech.
The total cost for this excluding the new rear mech, which only had to be changed as it was broken, was:-
Dura Ace 10 speed downtube shifters - £50 (I couldn't find any other 10 speed downtube shifters on the market but these are certainly worth the price)
Ultegra 10 speed cassette - £40
SRAM 10 speed chain - £15
I think for a spend of just over £100 it was well worth it to get lower gearing without big ratio differences in the mid / larger gears and end up with 18 beautifully smooth gears rather than the previous 14, it's certainly a worthwhile and simple route for anyone who finds themselves in the same situation.
0
