Cyclocross shifter help?

Question

Is this possible?

I bought a used cross bike that's setup with a full shimano xt group with thumb shifters and flat bars.

I want to run drop bars and eventually start racing. Would it be possible to use drop bars with the thumb shifters? Is this a bad idea?

If I want to convert my bike to drop bars with bar end shifters, what do I need to buy?

Answer 1

a thorough answer is that you can, with some creativity, get old skool thumbshifters (one lever) to work on drop bars.  we've done it in the drops and on the tops.  often, you need the deore dx model, with bendable clamps and longer bolts to get it to work on non-oversize bars. oversize bars, forget about it.

if you mean "thumbshifters" as in the shifter/brake levers that have a thumb (push) lever and pull (trigger) lever, that won't work.

you can get barcon shifters and brake levers, or "brifters" which are brake lever & shifters combined.  sram, campy, shimano, and sampson/microshift make 10 speed levers.  your xt group is 9 speed, so you should look for shimano 9 speed sti levers or campy 10 speed levers and clamp the cable differently - contact us for details on this.

if you have v-brakes, you'll also need the travel agent adaptors - to change the amount of cable pull.

good luck.

get another opinion here: http://cxmagazine.com/forums

Answer 2

Nope, flat bar shifter won't go on drop bars. They can't go around the bends. If you switch to drop bars I would recommend going to STI shifters. Any level STI lever will run that XT 105 or RSX, so you can do the change over relatively cheap!

Answer 3

Thumb shifters aint gonna cut it on drop bars.   And I hate bar-end shifters.   Get some STI brifters...105 level or better.