Re: [CR]Campy downtube shifters

I've been told that you can recover the stop plates from clamp-on shifters for use with braze-on mounts. I think I actually did it once. You just drill from the inside of the clamp with a large enough bit to cut off the swaged-over portion of the "axle" (for lack of a better term.)

But wait!!!! you still need the inner bushing and you're also going to destroy a perfectly good (and increasingly scarce) clamp. New style NR downtube shifters are approximately ten cents for twelve, if you get my drift. Just order a set or two from Renaissance where they are going for $9 NOS. (Yes Renaissance is open again. It seems they've experienced a rebirth, or something) Turn the levers into keychains, use the plates and bushings and make the rest of the parts in to lovely earings.

If you are a total stickler for accuracy, I think the old-knobbly shifters used black plastic bushings which are hard to find. But nobody will ever know if you use the newer white ones.

If your desired shifters are the really old ones with housing stops the destruction of your clamp, painful as it is, would be the cheapest way to go, unless you could arrange a trade.

Tom Dalton
In nearby Allentown