1. Dura Ace 7900 Front Derailleur

Shimano 7700 is awesome, looks classy, lightweight, durable(ish, nickle plating on rings and FD starts to come off and the STI crap out sometimes) and polished. I have been putting together and full down tube shifter group with matching hubs and seat post and pedals and have been thinking that it would be nice is someone made a classy group again.

The 11 athena group is almost classy, the levers are a little silly looking and the lack of hubs and down tube shifters and metal seat post is unfortunate. Mike p 04:40 PM. Maybe someone can explain to me why you can buy a Dura Ace 9 speed cassette for $140 but the 10 speed equivalent is $100 more. Buy low, sell high.

'Cept in bikes it's buy when it's no longer in fashion, that way it's cheap or free. I've had the same 7700 kit on my road bike since I switched from 7-speed. As good as it is on the road bike, it's better on the tandem. I put together my tandem with Dura-Ace 9-speed three years ago, other than replacing tires, chains and brake pads as they wear out, I don't have to do anything 'cept ride it. Christian 06:00 PM.

This was my 7700 spider that i spent an eternity sanding & polishing. It was a great setup, and a fantastic group in general. I can probably count on 2 hands the number of times i adjusted anything over the course of several+ years.

Only reason i ditched it was the shifters were falling apart (skipping) and buying oem's or gently used shifters was going to cost as much as some new stuff. I ended up with a new ultegra group for almost the same price as a nice pair of 7700 shifters. But to answer the original question, yes it was great stuff and still is.

Ti Designs 06:21 PM. The cranks are pretty and the chainrings last forever, but Octalink is a bad design. You mean the Dura-Ace BB was a bad design because it couldn't be adjusted. The needle bearings were so good that adjusting the end-load ball bearings was nearly impossible. The Ultegra unit was sealed and lasts as long as any bottom bracket I know of. The crank/spindle splined interface was only an issue when being installed. I've gotten 30K miles on my bike since the crank was last installed.

Fixed 06:48 PM. I too am a 7700 fan. I had a complete 7700 group (including headset, hubs, and pedals) on my 'good' bike for 10 full seasons. Other than replacing wear items (cassettes, chains, chainrings), it worked as well on the day I sold it as it did on the day it was first installed. The group only had two issues as far as I was concerned: the original brake pads were weak and the bottom bracket required regular overhauls if used in the rain. Both issues were easily addressed (Kool Stop salmon brake pads and overhauls as required). As much as everyone professes their affection for 7700, I find 7800 even better.

Digital signal processing salivahanan ebook torrents. The front shifting is improved, the brakes work well out of the box, and the external BB cups have been bullet-proof. I hope I can get 10+ seasons out of this group too.Greg Aaron O 04:10 PM.

First the good - DA 7700 is probably the only gruppo da has made that isn't an eyesore. The brakes are nice. Not an eyesore? Isn't that a glowing testimonial. /QUOTE Now the rest - the front trim sucks compared to comparable 9sp campy groups. The shifting is no where near as smooth.

Shifters do break and are not repairable. Levers don't fit my hands as well as campy and the hoods feel thin./QUOTE 3 stops on the front der is all you need, every bit as smooth shifting as campy, shifters are repairable. You are obviously a campy man, why are you even commenting on this thread? Aaron O 09:47 PM. Not an eyesore?

Isn't that a glowing testimonial. Now the rest - the front trim sucks compared to comparable 9sp campy groups. The shifting is no where near as smooth. Shifters do break and are not repairable. Levers don't fit my hands as well as campy and the hoods feel thin./QUOTE 3 stops on the front der is all you need, every bit as smooth shifting as campy, shifters are repairable. You are obviously a campy man, why are you even commenting on this thread?/QUOTEGreat. I'll gladly send you the broken shifters and will pay you $50 to fix them next time i break a set.

Good luck with that, since the rest of the cycling world says not so. I'm commenting because I have two bikes with 7700 and also have a bike with record 9. It's not as smooth and the front trim bites. If that is not your experience, you are entitled to disagree, and I'll snicker. I won't challenge your right to post just because I disagree with you. Regularguy412 10:06 PM.

I am still using 7400 cheers i will replace when it wears out 7410 DA cranks and 8-speed STI on my TG. IMHO, the 7410 DA cranks are still one of the nicest ever produced by Shimano. Not at all clunky and use a 103 mm BB spindle. Gilbert Duclos-LaSalle won Paris-Roubaix on them when he was near age 40. Still gives me, as an old fart, some hope. I've polished them, but very difficult to keep them super shiny - as my sweat is apparently somewhat caustic.

NOT a fan of cranks that use outboard BB's, even though the Q-factor on them is narrow (which I do like). Mike in AR:beer: guyintense 10:55 PM. I'll gladly send you the broken shifters and will pay you $50 to fix them next time i break a set. Good luck with that, since the rest of the cycling world says not so.

QUOTE Servicing Shimano STI Levers: According to the article'if you can replace a head gasket on a Norton Commando, you'll be able to rebuild an STI.' I've done both. You campy fans are quick to slam Shimano but you really need to add 'in my opinion' to your comments. Terrific.I'll pay you to fix them next time, everyone wins. And if you can't, i expect you to cover shipping. It's interesting that no bike shop will try it, no one on the Internet will try it and a shimano rep told me they are not repairable. I checked, thoroughly.

There are a few guys who will repair 8 sp sti, and they won't touch nine. The article you linked also discusses the lack of spare part availability. I challenge you to find someone offering repair work on 7700.

An article saying it's theoretically possible is useless if there is no one doing it. I am not able to and would not invest the time if I could. Bottom line is when my campy breaks, my shop repairs it. When shimano breaks, I'm paying $200 for used shifters.

On the plus side, shimano has long term collector value since not much will survive. In other words, I'm calling bs.

Campy can be worked on easily, has superior trim and that's not opinion. Binxnyrwarrsoul 06:39 AM.

Getting into an argument over this is kinda silly. Can't we just keep it friendly? It is true that 7700 sti is really only at best 'kind of' rebuildable.

With no small part availability it's pretty tough to fix anything. The trim works all right bit I also prefer the non indexed approach campy takes on front shifting. I think that this group is best with downtube shifters now. Replacement sti are through the roof. It is really unfortunate that both sram and shimano shifters are all destined for an early death given their parent companies lack of interest in repairability. If you don't mind downtube shifters it is a nice bunch of parts that will last a long time. Aaron O 08:40 AM.

Set up correctly 7700 trims just as well as any Campy I have used. As far as having your LBS repair Campy shifters congrats, but in my area no LBS will touch either to repair. Not an opinion. That's pitiful, not repairing Campagnolo levers.

It is very easy, spare parts are easy to find.seeing a bike shop(s) being lazy drives me nutz. Bike shops are supposed to be the experts, no? No, I guess not. Or ship them to me, I repair Campagnolo(not shimano) levers all the time.

Tell the lazy bike shops to send them to me also. Bicycletricycle 08:58 AM. I am a bicycle mechanic and I repair campy shifters, it is not hard.

It would be hard for me to trust a shop that did not repair them. All you need is the exploded view of the assembly from the manual on the web and your set. Some shops don't build wheels now,.? Yep, when I get 'bike mechanics' come in and ask for a job(lots at the beginning of the school year at CU), I ask if they can build wheels. Almost all say, 'well, I can true one'.adios.

I saw a wheel 'trued' by another shop the other day and I have to wonder if the guy really had any idea what he was doing.it was that bad. AND they charged the customer for this pisspoor job.amazing. No wonder customers learn this stuff for themselves. If my truck wrench did such a crappy job, i would do it myself also. Avalonracing 09:31 AM.

I honestly think 7700 is Shimano at it's best for a number of reasons. The 8-speed STI had an alarming failure rate, but the STI offered real performance advantages.

Dura Ace 7900 Front Derailleur

The first time I realized this I was working with some of my riders on speedwork. I would use my track bike for this sort of thing which meant I had to pick my gearing well. I would have to use acceleration from the jump if I ran a gear too low or top speed to the line if the gear was high.

Then came that sprint when Jeremy and I were driving to the line and I heard him shift and watched as he pulled away. 7700 made STI durable, so with the lack of returns (I work at a large shop, my sample data set is larger than most) I put it on my new bike (I rode and raced my last bikes, two identical Peter Mooneys, for 12 years - I don't swich bikes or components often). 'New Dura-Ace' in the early 80's also ushered in the era of increasingly shorter lived platforms.

5-speed was around forever, most of my racing was done on 6-speed, 7 and 8 speed came and went. There was only one generation of 9-speed Dura-Ace, but the question of 'how many gears do you really need' kept coming up.

The other little issue was that the rear spacing hadn't changed since 8-speed. 5-speed was 120mm, 6 and 7-speed was 126mm, now it's 130mm. Chain widths keep going down, 9-speed was 6.5mm, 10-speed is 5.6mm. The whole drive train wears far faster with 10-speed than it did with 9-speed, and the components cost far more - that's a bad combination.

What I didn't realize about 7700 is that it's the most workable group Shimano made. There was a triple group, so there's both a triple front derailleur and a long cage rear derailleur.

9-speed also works with their Mega-9 mountain bike cassettes, so wide range gearing is easy. Before Mt Washington customers were swapping out cranks and derailleurs and all sorts of things. I run a Dura-Ace triple rear derailleur with the large upper pulley replaced with the smaller XT so it clears a 32T cog. My entire switch-over for mountain climbing gears is a cassette swap. My tandem also runs a full 7700 group ('cept the BB's, I always use Ultegra for those). I had to reverse the threading on a few cranks, but in my 10 years of selling tandems I've not found a better set of components for the job.

My bottom line is this, I don't know of anyone putting in more mileage in more conditions with fewer problems. Throw in that I've spent far less in the process and you have a clear winner. All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:16 PM.