burrkrayecycles said:
heya alistarsh
i didn't know that either that's actually a good piece of info we can all use
i always thought they were all compatible
Nope. As far as I can tell...
Shimano 9-speed groups (road and mountain) - all compatible with each other (assuming derailleur has cage sized for cassette - ie no short cage on a 32t big cog cassette).
Shimano 10-speed groups - NOT compatible. Road and Mountain (DynaShift) use different pull ratios, so shifters/derailleurs must match.
SRAM 9-speed - all compatible with each other
SRAM 10-speed - ???? not sure
Shimano and SRAM front derailleurs/shifters - all compatible
Internally geared hubs are their own systems, usually.
All that's for shifters/derailleurs. For brakes...
Road levers (drop bar, STI, whatever you want to call'em) will only actuate road calipers or cantilevers
Mountain levers (flat bar) come in two pull ratios - for cantilevers/road calipers OR for V-brakes/disc (and most new levers are v-brake/disc unless noted otherwise)
There are a few exceptions - some mountain levers have two settings, and there are a few road brake levers that will pull V-brakes/discs properly (but none of the STI-style levers do this). And SRAM does make a road-use disc brake for use with STI-style levers (used on cyclocross bikes, usually).
I don't know where the vintage drum brakes fit into the brake lever mix. Probably the same pull ratio as cantilevers, but that's a guess.
And, for the rich among us, skip all the cable pull nonsense, and use Shimano Alfine Di2 instead. Internally geared hub with electronic shifting - pretty freakin' awesome, but more expensive than most of the bikes we're talking about.