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Twist vs trigger gear shifters


TheEpicSquared

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So I'm getting a new bike (yay!) for me and my dad, and we're looking st two alternatives, identical in all respects except that one has a twist gear shifter and the other has a trigger gear shifter. Is there a difference (other than the fact that they're different mechanisms)? Is one more durable than the other? What's your personal preference? :) 

Edited by TheEpicSquared
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While twist shifters are a much simpler mechanism (just a spool and a clicky-bit) and thus should be easier to service, I prefer trigger shifters. They give you a greater mechanical advantage and don't rely on friction, which means that they don't require very much hand strength to operate.

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My preference is speed shifters (trigger). Partly I just have a deep love of all things buttons and levers, and partly I prefer not having to alter my grip to shift.

My suggestion though would be to try each. Most bike shops will let you try them out in the parking lot to get a bit of a feel for them (bikes aren't something I would buy online because I want to try them first, but that might just be me).

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2 hours ago, Randox said:

bikes aren't something I would buy online because I want to try them first, but that might just be me

Oh no, its always much better to do something like that. Also with shoes.

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My impression on repairs and maintainance, after working in a bike repair shop for 3 years is the two are about the same. If you find one easy to repair then the other will be too, if one is a PITA then the other will be too. They don't need much maintainance anyway GIVEN they are proper quality. Low quality and trigger becomes slightly more reliable. No idea how many low quality twist grips I've seen falling apart as soon as they are out of the box or not installed on the bar. High quality and dont worry about any of that nonsense.

I have twist grip on my bike just like the one you linked to and I'm well happy but I can see others prefering not having to readjust their grip after every gear shift.

 

Last: I definitely agree with those who say try the bike before buying so online stores can be a bit iffy if they have a no return policy or general poor customer support.

Edited by LN400
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29 minutes ago, Nuke said:

those twist shifters are horribly unreliable.

You probably just saw rubbish ones. Decent ones, like Shimano or something, should not have these issues. I will take a good twist shifter over a soggy lever shifter any day. When both are of equal quality, I am not sure. Levers often are less direct than I would imagine them being. However, it would also depend on the type of bike and therefore use.

One advantage of a twist shifter is that a shift between multiple gears is easier.

Edited by Camacha
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22 minutes ago, Camacha said:

You probably just saw rubbish ones. Decent ones, like Shimano or something, should not have these issues. I will take a good twist shifter over a soggy lever shifter any day. When both are of equal quality, I am not sure. Levers often are less direct than I would imagine them being. However, it would also depend on the type of bike and therefore use.

One advantage of a twist shifter is that a shift between multiple gears is easier.

i used to put bikes together for a living, but to be fair the stock hardware is often lackluster. the ones on schwinns were pretty good, but everything else dont trust it. il agree though that every lever shifter is garbage. the best ones were the old skool style found on early 10 speed bikes. trigger shifters are different though as they shift one gear for each click. this allows a much more gradual shift up reducing lash between chain and sprocket. its slower yes but its easier on the derailer and definitely the sprocket. the best shifting mechanism i ever seen was on a 3 speed shaft driven bike. it was fast, fluid and smooth. the only reason bikes have so many gears is the derailer can only throw the chain so far and you need to step up. you end up finding yourself using the same 3 or 4 gears even if you have 24 or more speeds to choose from.  so having wider ratios on fewer gears is much better, and the fact that shifting was near instantaneous. ive even read about cvt hub shifters which dont have integer gears at all, but ive never actually seen one, just pick any ratio between the lowest and the highest and shifting is a smooth fluid motion with no skips.

Edited by Nuke
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3 minutes ago, Nuke said:

i used to put bikes together for a living, but to be fair the stock hardware is often lackluster. the ones on schwinns were pretty good, but everything else dont trust it.

Define "stock hardware"? Shimano (Nexus, for instance) seems to be fairly common and that is pretty decent stuff.

 

2 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Maybe it was low quality, but the twist shifter I had was harder to shift which led to the rubber covering peeling off fairly quick, which made it even harder to shift.

That sounds like cheap rubbish.

Edited by Camacha
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28 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Define "stock hardware"? Shimano (Nexus, for instance) seems to be fairly common and that is pretty decent stuff.

 

That sounds like cheap rubbish.

i did see some shimano, but also a lot of no name chinese made garbage as well. the shimano was iffy on anything other than the schwinns though, if it was found on a mongoose or a vertical, there were problems caused by horrible tolerances in the frame manufacture (though they did look like the same systems). and while shimano does make some really nice systems, their low end lines can be pretty terrible. if you arent spending at least $200 bucks you wont see descent hardware. better yet spend at least $300 and get it from a bike shop that has a mechanic that knows his stuff. if you get it from a retail store, they will have a contracted mechanic that doesn't get paid enough to spend more than 10 minutes on each bike. i was one of these guys and i got paid by the bike not the hour, and i needed to do 6 an hour (and i was told to aim for 10 an hour) just to make it worth it. in that 10 minutes i had to get the front wheel on, the handlebars on, the seat installed, the tires filled, and calibrate all the break and derailer systems. the schwinns were a dream out of the box, toolless assembly for the seat and front wheel the handlebar was just a hex nut and the systems were calibrated at the factory, everything just worked out of the box. i actually hated the kids bikes the most, they had the most problems, more accessories to install (bells and ribbons and the like) and they paid the least.

Edited by Nuke
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36 minutes ago, Nuke said:

i did see some shimano, but also a lot of no name chinese made garbage as well. the shimano was iffy on anything other than the schwinns though

That does not make a lot of sense. Shimano quality does not differ depending on which bike it is mounted on. They have different product lines, but the Nexus stuff seems to be the cheapest road bike line they have and that is mounted on pretty much all the decent bikes that do not cost an arm and a leg. You also do not need Rohloff hubs to get around.

Whatever the case, just get a decent brand bike with decent brand gear stuff if you plan on using the bike regularly. Cheap Chinese stuff will last a year or so, before falling apart fairly permanently. Spend a little more than you ideally would want to, but not a stupid amount of money. A good bike will last you decades. If you do not plan on using the thing regularly, it probably matters less what you buy, as long as you store it inside. Even then, paying a bit more for quality might be the prudent thing to do.

It probably helps to be somewhere where bikes are actually a means of transport, rather than them being almost exclusively a hobby. If people actually need to get from A to B on them, impractical rubbish gets filtered out pretty quickly.

Edit: wait, did you mean 200 dollars for the entire bike?

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Regarding the "triggers shift one gear:" My right thumb trigger can go as many as four gears in a single pull. Great for "oh crap hill" moments.

When I had a (cheap K-Mart) bike with twist shifters, I never shifted. Maybe it was just because I was a little kid with limp noodles for fingers, but the twists were too hard to crank, especially once my hands got sweaty. That was some kind of Schwinn.

Now I have Shimono Deore XT's from the late 90's, and they work like a dream. I shift when I need to shift, and it's never a struggle. Even though they've probably not been serviced in ten to fifteen years.

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2 hours ago, Camacha said:

That does not make a lot of sense. Shimano quality does not differ depending on which bike it is mounted on. They have different product lines, but the Nexus stuff seems to be the cheapest road bike line they have and that is mounted on pretty much all the decent bikes that do not cost an arm and a leg. You also do not need Rohloff hubs to get around.

Whatever the case, just get a decent brand bike with decent brand gear stuff if you plan on using the bike regularly. Cheap Chinese stuff will last a year or so, before falling apart fairly permanently. Spend a little more than you ideally would want to, but not a stupid amount of money. A good bike will last you decades. If you do not plan on using the thing regularly, it probably matters less what you buy, as long as you store it inside. Even then, paying a bit more for quality might be the prudent thing to do.

It probably helps to be somewhere where bikes are actually a means of transport, rather than them being almost exclusively a hobby. If people actually need to get from A to B on them, impractical rubbish gets filtered out pretty quickly.

Edit: wait, did you mean 200 dollars for the entire bike?

 

shimano works out great if your frame isnt bent. unfortunately this is more the rule than the exception. and thats assuming the underpaid overworked laborer who welded on the derailer brackets did a good job.  derailer mounted at a slight angle can severely alter the throw so that some gears end up completely unusable. thats why a large pair of pliers and a hammer were in my toolbox at all times. trim that out and the gear shifter works like a charm. of course at 10 minutes a bike, i only bothered with the worst cases (why i said go to a bike shop, they are paid enough to care).

the $200 is about the threshold of where the bikes start getting good. anything in the $100-$200 range is ok if you plan to at a later date throw on a bunch of upgrades. sub $100 good luck, you are looking at a bike that might last a couple summers and will fall apart. of course these are in usd, and these are prices in southeast alaska where shipping is problematic at best and as a result things are more expensive. knock about $50 off if you live down south. incidentally if you find yourself up in anchorage you will have access to one of the best bike trail systems i have ever seen, at least during the parts of they year when you can ride bikes (of course you do see cross country skiers and dog sleds on them during the winter months).

 

 

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1 minute ago, Nuke said:

the $200 is about the threshold of where the bikes start getting good. anything in the $100-$200 range is ok 

See, that is where the confusion arose. I though you were talking about the shifting gear costing 100 to 200 dollars, not the entire bike. I could not understand all these problems you were talking about: bent frame, shoddy workmanship, tolerances out of whack. It never even occurred to me you could or would buy a new bike for $100 or even $200. That sounds terrible. Buying just the shifting gear for that amount of money, on the other hand, sounds reasonable, though most people will just buy a bike that has it mounted.

I guess living in a part of the world where bikes are considered transportation (and are built accordingly) skews your perspective a little bit. I recently bought a second hand, decent brand bike and did some work on it. Obviously, I did some research and bought a few parts online. The foreign pages often made me giggle, talking about every day use of a bike and storing it outside as if it was something exceptional and exotic. Sometimes I really do forget how different our world views can be.

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here we get these rust buckets, if you leave it out in the rain it dissolves practically overnight. you ride it in the rain and pretty soon your chain and derailers rust. its not really something you can rely on to get to work on time on a daily basis. people would buy bikes, ride them very hard for a couple days, and they would come back to the store and call it defective, it was all beat up and busted. they would get a full refund of course, the store would bring the bike back, have me fix it up, and then put it back on the shelf as new. the practice was so shifty that i stopped doing it for them. i say again do not ever buy a bike from a us retail store.

Edited by Nuke
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  • 1 month later...

Was just passing through in search of something else entirely, and google popped this thread up - figure it as a sign, since I'd just made a major discovery about shifters...

I'm a very small woman with small hands. Fairly long fingers, proportionately, but because my hands are narrow, very limited reach to the side. I always thought I was doing something wrong because never, on any bike I had (all with trigger shifters), shifting was always awkward. I moved them in, out, up, down, still had to really just let go of the grip to get at the end of the lever.  Then I acquired a bike with twist shifters and... a light dawned!

Basically, my hands are too small/narrow/short/something, to reach the full range of the trigger without my hand moving on - even *re*moving from - the grip.  I guess it never occurred to me that I'm *that* stubby. But with twist shifters, set up comfortably, I don't have to move my hands at all, just sort of roll them to the side.  With twist shifters, I might as well be using top tube shifters, for all the ability I've got to shift and steer at the same time.

Probably not an issue for most folks, but if you've got little hands - I figure the gods of the internet brought me here for a reason.  :wink:

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