Any friction shifter with any derailleur?

[SkinnyOldGuy]

Any friction shifter with any derailleur?

That's what I'm seeing on the posts that I search but I don't want to buy something and have someone say, yeah, but not that combination.

Three speeds in front, seven in back. I'll use any used stem-mount pair-of-levers shifter I might find. Harvested from a junk bike, or from ebay, or whatever. Everything at least ten or twenty years old.

Are my chances good that it'll work?

And oh, since we're talking, I haven't done this for some years....Is there any fancy new cable I should be looking at to make the shifting a little more nicer or is that a part that has never changed?

Thank you kindly

Sog

 

[kdelong]

For what you are describing, any friction shifter will work with a 3 speed front derailleur (FD) and a 7 speed rear derailleur (RD). It starts to get a little more difficult when you start getting into 9 speed or 10 speed RDs. There are no special cable requirements for your combination. Once again, as you get into the higher gear cassettes with their much smaller shift windows, there are special cable housings that will not compress like normal cable housings that are required. But a 7 speed has such large shift windows that any cable housing will work.