Gearing Eggspurt needed

An anonymous poster said:

I want to change the handlebars on my little Dahon Speed Pro. It
has a SRAM Dual Drive set up. I was wondering if I can use bar end
shifters to shift the internal gears (what substitutes for chainrings
and front derailleur) on the Dual Drive. The bike uses a SRAM 5.0 grip
shift type shifter for this now. I know I can use a bar end on the
right for the SRAM 5.0 rear derailleur and suspect I can do the same for
left ...

There is no barcon that will work with that derailer, it's one of SRAM's
ESP series, requires an ESP shifter...however, derailers are dirt
cheap, to that's not a serious obstacle.

Shifting the 3-speed with a friction barcon will work, but there is a
small risk of damaging the hub if you get the middle setting wrong.

I ran a Sturmey-Archer ASC 3-speed with a friction barcon for a long
time before I finally made an appropriate trigger control for it. Once I
learned where the lever should be for middle gear it worked fine, even
for this notoriously delicate hub.

Sheldon "Where There's A Will" Brown
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. |
| But there is no evidence of any sort against it. |
| Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it? |
| --Robert A. Heinlein |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com http://sheldonbrown.com

Sheldon Brown said:

An anonymous poster said:

I want to change the handlebars on my little Dahon Speed Pro. It has
a SRAM Dual Drive set up. I was wondering if I can use bar end
shifters to shift the internal gears (what substitutes for chainrings
and front derailleur) on the Dual Drive. The bike uses a SRAM 5.0
grip shift type shifter for this now. I know I can use a bar end on
the right for the SRAM 5.0 rear derailleur and suspect I can do the
same for left ...

There is no barcon that will work with that derailer, it's one of SRAM's
ESP series, requires an ESP shifter...however, derailers are dirt
cheap, to that's not a serious obstacle.

Shifting the 3-speed with a friction barcon will work, but there is a
small risk of damaging the hub if you get the middle setting wrong.

I ran a Sturmey-Archer ASC 3-speed with a friction barcon for a long
time before I finally made an appropriate trigger control for it. Once I
learned where the lever should be for middle gear it worked fine, even
for this notoriously delicate hub.

Sheldon "Where There's A Will" Brown

Hey Sheldon,

Thanks for your sage advice. I posted this same question to the
phred touring list and got similar answers, I want to change to
some "cow horn" type bar not full drops. After much looking about
I think that an easier solution might be to change my bars to some
that Bike Friday sells
<http://store.bikefriday.com/product_info.php?cPath=157&products_id=8121>
and just mount the grip shifts on the the center section and use
some drop bar brake handles that work with V-brakes where BF
thinks I should mount an STI shifter. All that's if the center
section diameter is right. I guess I am going to have to call BF
to discover the dimensions.

This all came about because I bought a fine nitto bullhorn
handlebar last year and have been searching for a project for it.
:-) Maybe I can mill out the center section of those SRAM 5.0
shifter to fit the nitto bar.

I used your instructions for mounting a grip shifter to a Scott
at-2 bar to mount some SRAM X.0 shifter on my mountain bike. I
ended up re-assembling the major pieces of the shifters on the bar
after I got all those pieces around the crazy curves of my AT-4
handlebar. It looked like there might be enough material there to
mill them out to fit the larger diameter bars. I may also end-up
with an expensive junk pile.

So much work for those Nittos. Maybe I should hang them on the
wall and just admire them. :-)

thanks again,

Randy