Left hand rear shifting

denis's mate

Helping a mate to set up bike.
He has limited movement of right hand due to industrial accident, so.. we want to shift the rear gears with his left hand.
So far the only thing we can think of is using a Sram Grip Shift or friction bar top shifter.
A long shot, but does anyone do proper LH rear thumb shifters?

The Rookie

No.

Little wrong with gripshifts, I've used one on my commuter for the last 5 years and have one on my hack bike.

The decent ones are nothing like the cheap ones (which aren't very nice), I have an X0 and the shifts are light, you can grab a wristful in one go and the spring assist means similar weighting in both directions, they are also lighter than most if not all thumbshifters.

The 9 speed is compact and mates more easily than the bulkier 10 speed with a range of brakes, some brake levers get pushed too far inboard with the ten speed to be ideal, others work fine, needless to say its the Shimano brakes that seem to be the worst in that respect, some don't see it as an issue but a friend who has the combo having swapped SRAM for Shimano brakes is in the process of buying new brakes and swapping the Shimano onto another bike. You can get wide range cassettes for 1x9 applications now anyway, so getting a decent X0 shifter and rear mech (or X9) used and running 1x9 won't be too expensive but is quite effective in use.

denis's mate

The Rookie wrote:

No.

Little wrong with gripshifts, I've used one on my commuter for the last 5 years and have one on my hack bike.

The decent ones are nothing like the cheap ones (which aren't very nice), I have an X0 and the shifts are light, you can grab a wristful in one go and the spring assist means similar weighting in both directions, they are also lighter than most if not all thumbshifters.

The 9 speed is compact and mates more easily than the bulkier 10 speed with a range of brakes, some brake levers get pushed too far inboard with the ten speed to be ideal, others work fine, needless to say its the Shimano brakes that seem to be the worst in that respect, some don't see it as an issue but a friend who has the combo having swapped SRAM for Shimano brakes is in the process of buying new brakes and swapping the Shimano onto another bike. You can get wide range cassettes for 1x9 applications now anyway, so getting a decent X0 shifter and rear mech (or X9) used and running 1x9 won't be too expensive but is quite effective in use.

Agreed.
I used 9 speed XO for many years and loved them.Only changed back to thumb shifters cos of stupid price of 10/11 speed.
Your assessment was pretty much what we worked out, but we thought we ask the question.
That said, I am surprised with the advent of 1 x setups, no one has offer LH rear shifters. Just a thought.

Thanks Rookie

LimitedGarry

denis's mate wrote:

The Rookie wrote:

That said, I am surprised with the advent of 1 x setups, no one has offer LH rear shifters. Just a thought.

Thanks Rookie

Well 1x setups are still quite infant. Just now we're seeing them becoming a common thing on new bikes. It'll take a while before 1x will be the default, but I think we'll eventually see rear shifting levers coming in left and right variants. Right now, it's sometimes problematic to buy just the rear shifter.