Lance Armstrong's STI Levers

Trek_Athlete said:

I was wondering why in some pictures I have noticed that Lance's road rig has a different left STI lever. The shifter for the left lever appears to be on the down tube. Why is his bike arranged like this?

Beloki does this as well. It shaves another 100 gms off, but probably the main reason is the ability to fine tune the front gear change.

The primary reason is the small weight savings. The right shifter doesn't get used much on mountain stages, so it doesn't make much difference where it is. Since most of those climbing bikes are already at the weight limit, the savings are usually used to compensate for things like stiffer bars.

TA, I never noticed this. If you can find one, post a picture, or a link. This is interesting.

Chance3290 said:

TA, I never noticed this. If you can find one, post a picture, or a link. This is interesting.

There's a good picture of the setup here:
http://www.velonews.com/tour2004/details/articles/6631.0.html

Thanks. I don't get this set up, or how is saves weight, but then again, I'm probably years away from winning the TdF.

Chance3290 said:

Thanks. I don't get this set up, or how is saves weight, but then again, I'm probably years away from winning the TdF.

A Dura-Ace STI weighs about 210g. An old Dura-Ace aero brake lever weighs 120g, and the down tube shifter weighs 38g. The shorter cable probably saves about 10g. Not nearly enough to matter for mere mortals, but could be the difference between being able to run kind of stiff bars and really stiff bars.

artmichalek said:

A Dura-Ace STI weighs about 210g. An old Dura-Ace aero brake lever weighs 120g, and the down tube shifter weighs 38g. The shorter cable probably saves about 10g. Not nearly enough to matter for mere mortals, but could be the difference between being able to run kind of stiff bars and really stiff bars.

And again, I understood that when I joined this forum there would be no math involved.

thanks

Plus, you know that its old school cool!😎 😎

moo-jo said:

Plus, you know that its old school cool!😎 😎

Old school cool with Sti levers? :eek:😠 Without Campagnolo Corsa Record, Super Record (my favorite) or Nuovo Record?

THIS is old school cool...😉

artmichalek said:

There's a good picture of the setup here:
velonews.com6631.0.htmlOpen ↗

It looks like the frame must be somehow adjusted for the downtube shifter (e.g., braze-on?). Is this true? If so, wasn't Trek making a big deal a couple years back that Lance & company use the same frames as regular customers?

melslur said:

It looks like the frame must be somehow adjusted for the downtube shifter (e.g., braze-on?). Is this true? If so, wasn't Trek making a big deal a couple years back that Lance & company use the same frames as regular customers?

Oh come on 😕 . Most of the top guys have some special change to their bike, eg. I believe Boonen has straight chain stays on his Time to help get the power down better, as opposed to the curved stays on the stock model.

It's one of the great things about cycling, you can watch Basso win a Giro stage, head down to the local Cervelo dealer the next day and walk out with the same bike. Of course there will be minor changes that Basso has made, but it's still the same bike.

melslur said:

It looks like the frame must be somehow adjusted for the downtube shifter (e.g., braze-on?). Is this true? If so, wasn't Trek making a big deal a couple years back that Lance & company use the same frames as regular customers?

That's a bit of an over-reaction.

I don't know the timeline for Trek but for quite a while after the introduction of STi most frame manufacturers built with regular frame bosses for downtube shifters. Shimano made a cable stop adjuster that mounted to the standard boss.

Otherwise, I don't see how attaching a shifter boss to the frame before it goes into the oven qualifies the frame as not being the same as those for regular customers.

Powerful Pete said:

Old school cool with Sti levers? :eek:😠 Without Campagnolo Corsa Record, Super Record (my favorite) or Nuovo Record?

THIS is old school cool...😉

Can’t imagine the weight of this bike. Plus the same bike was used for all the mountain stages. Now they have bikes for time trials, bikes for flat stages and bikes for the high mountains.

frusso10 said:

Can’t imagine the weight of this bike.

I can imagine it weighs around 6.8kg give or take a couple miligrams.