’94 A2MS budget build

Is it absolutely impossible to tune a 9 speed shifter for use on a 8 speed cassette?

Yep! It will never be perfect, sorry brother. There are key reasons and secondary reasons why it will always be sloppy… but not so sloppy that it won’t work most of the time. First, a 9 speed shifter pulls less cable because the gear and chain spacing are narrower than a 6, 7, or 8 speed cluster. However, the shifting does work cleanly on most of the cogs because there is so much gear overlap. The secondary things vary from worn teeth up front on the chainrings or in back on the cassette, used chain will have chain stretch that adds to the sloppiness, new vs. used shift cables… both can play havoc on shifter.

It can work, the commuter I just finished for my friend has a 9 speed Deore trigger shifter and an 8 speed STX rear derailleur and both are pulling the chain over a Sugino singlespeed track crank and a 7 speed Sachs (Malliard, pre-SRAM) freewheel. If it sounds like pure mish-mash, it is but my buddy was on a super tight budget. He supplied some of the parts, I had to fill in the rest and make it all come together. Yes, it was a bit of a nightmare but if you take your time and patiently work through the trial and error stage, it can be pretty great in the end.

Keep asking questions, we’ll help in any way possible, and you’ll be bombin’ the trails soon enough.

You’re in Salt Lake, right?

How about an upgrade to you build?

Check it out:

http://saltlakecity.craigslist.org/bik/3217808574.html
Race Face crankset, syncros chainring, blackspire ring god – $30 (Liberty Park)
“Race Face crankset in red, syncros chainring and blackspire ring god bash guard. I got these from a friend and never used them, they show signs of wear.”
Call or text Mike
801 448 3172

Good luck!

-D-

p.s. If you buy them and decide that there aren’t right for your build, I’ll take them off your hands… no worries.

Oh and obviously I went with V-brakes instead of the original canti’s.

Forgive me for mentioning this if I’m mistaken… are your brake levers canti or v-brake? I can’t tell for sure because of the foreshortening going on in the picture, those look like canti levers. I trust you picked up some v-brake specific levers to go with the v-brake arms, right? If not, if those are canti levers, they won’t pull enough cable and your v-brakes will always be mushy. You can get around that issue with a Rollamajig or Problem Solver but those usually cost more than replacing the levers. Check out the pic on my A2L, I ran Rollamajigs because I didn’t want to give up my XT 7 speed pods w/canti levers but I still wanted to run v-brakes. Sorry brother, no way around this lever to caliper issue.

Yeah. Crapola. Ah well live and learn. Good thing I got a new job yesterday with a 25% pay increase. ➡ Where do I find those majiggy things?

Hey brother,

First things first, congrats on the new job and the added dough!

I’ll kick in to your build, I have a new set of Avid levers that you can have. They came with my BB7 mechanical disc drakes that I ran on my 96’er/69’er build. I ran PAUL cross levers because they can be set up for cantilever (I ran in the back with a set of PAUL Neo-Retro canti brakes) or v-brake/mechanical disc (the BB7’s that I ran up front). You are more than welcome to have them. I’ll look around, they need the barrel adjusters, I gave the pair to my buddy after his got messed up. The small USPS flat rate box is like $5.75, cover the postage and they’re yours. Let me know…

Peace,

-D-

p.s. The levers are an exact match to the picture, minus the fact that they are missing the black barrel adjusters. The missing adjusters do not stop the levers from working, but it’s the fact that you ‘ll have no adjustability when your new brake cables begin to stretch. Gotta get some adjusters… do you have any spares that you can pull from? Like I said, I’ll look around for a replacement pair.