Brake shifter

A brake shifter is a bicycle component in which the shifter is integrated into the brake lever . This makes it possible to shift gears without having to release your hand from the driving position on the brake .

development

The German bicycle designer Christian Smolik developed the first brake levers for racing bicycles with an integrated step-change lever, which he applied for a patent in 1981 and offered to the traditional German manufacturer Sachs for marketing without success. After Smolik dropped the patent for cost reasons, the Japanese manufacturer Shimano brought the first brake / shift levers onto the market in 1989 with the Shimano Total Integration (STI) model . Today all well-known bicycle manufacturers produce brake and shift levers and they are part of the standard equipment of modern racing bikes , cyclocross bikes and gravel bikes . A more recent development are brake shift levers that serve as control units for electronic bicycle derailleurs.

Mountain bike

Brake / switch combinations quickly established themselves in the mountain bike and trekking bike sector. However, the gear lever was not integrated into the brake lever here. Instead, the previous thumb shift lever was replaced by a shift mechanism with two levers that could be mounted closer to the shift lever. This switching mechanism, known by Shimano RapidFire , is located under the brake and is operated with the index finger and thumb .

Systems from different manufacturers

Shimano

Shimano presented its Shimano Total Integration (STI) system with the new 600 group, the 600 Ultegra. The STIs were best known in the 6401 series of the 600 Ultegra Tricolor and the Shimano 105 series, which were manufactured from 1992 to 1997 .

Shimano designed the levers in such a way that the brake cable was routed on the handlebars as usual and the shift cable was run horizontally on the side. Pressing the brake lever shifted “up”, and a small lever in the brake lever shifted “down”.

As of the 105 series ST-5700 and the corresponding Ultegra series, the shift cables are not run on the side, like the competitor Campagnolo , but like the brake cables along the handlebars.

With the technology called "Dual Control Lever", Shimano adopted standards from its MTB technology for its Dura-Ace , Ultegra and 105 racing bike groups . It should make it possible to switch from the front as from the back with just one finger.

Campagnolo

Ergopower of the Campagnolo Veloce group until 2008

Also Campagnolo soon led to a Shimano brake lever. The company developed a technique with which the index finger was switched “up” and a small lever on the side of the brake was used to “down”. Campagnolo relocated both brake and shift cables on the handlebars, which prevented the Bowden cables from getting tangled and made a “tidy” visual impression.

SRAM

The company SRAM used Shiftbrakelever in his racing groups Red , Force , Rival and Apex . The specialty of the younger generations of the " DoubleTap " technology is the fixed brake lever and only one gear lever per side. With a short tactile movement, a higher gear is shifted, with longer tactile movements a lower gear.

See also

• Derailleur

literature

• Peter Barzel, Michael Bollschweiler, Christian Smolik : The new bicycle technology: material, construction, production (bicycle technology and repair). Bielefelder Verlagsanstalt, 2008, ISBN 3-87073-322-5 .
• Christian Smolik , Stefan Etzel: The new bicycle repair book. Bielefelder Verlagsanstalt, 1999, 9th edition 2010, ISBN 3-87073-055-2 .
• Fritz Winkler, Siegfried Rauch: Bicycle technology: repair, construction, production (bicycle technology and repair). Bielefelder Verlagsanstalt, 2005, ISBN 3-87073-131-1 .
• Stefan Etzel, Christian Smolik : The great bicycle lexicon, technology - practice - material from A to Z. Bielefelder Verlagsanstalt, 1997, ISBN 3-87073-127-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DE 000003136922 A1 : Brake levers with stepping device for operating bicycle chain gears (priority date: 17.09.1981).
2. ↑ Cornelius Herstatt, Christoph Stockstrom, Hugo Tschirky, Akio Nagahira: Management of Technology and Innovation in Japan. Springer Verlag, 2009, ISBN 3-540-25326-2 , page 41 f.
3. ^ ^{A b} Fritz Winkler, Siegfried Rauch: Bicycle technology: repair, construction, manufacturing . Page 284 f., See literature
4. ↑ Shimano 600 Ultegra, 6400 series . VeloBase.com. accessed on January 28, 2018.
5. ↑ Shimano ST-1055, 105SC , VeloBase.com, accessed January 28, 2018.
6. ↑ ST-5700-LL. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 4, 2017 ; accessed on June 18, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ ST-5800-L. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 5, 2017 ; accessed on June 18, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Dual control levers. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 11, 2017 ; Retrieved June 19, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.