Fitting a XTR M900 shifter without brakelevers

[Thias]

Hi,
I want to use my m900 shifters without the brake levers. I know there are those Grafton shifter perces. But tey are far too expensive. And there are Magura clamps. But tey tend to cost 40 Euros and are hard to come by. Plus I dont like the plastic look somehow.
But maybe someone knows an alternative way? Some clamp from the lower end shimano range? Alivio or something like that?

cheers
Matthias

 

[ishaw]

I think you can use ones from stx shifters. You may need to modify slightly, I can't remember now. The are also xlite ones designed for m900 shifters but pretty scarce I think.

 

[ridevintagemtb]

I did it with Alivio shifters. Had to drill a new hole to make sure the ones from the shifter aligned properly, but it works fine.

 

[jimo746]

Re:

Grafton and Moonhead both do them, well made, but scarce and pricey.

There was a thread about a German mtb forum that had grouped together and had some copies of the Grafton shifter mounts made.

 

[Thias]

Thanks for that pic, Mike! I think that look neat. So there is a good use for those Alivio shifters after all...

@jimo746 Yea, I know that tread on IBC. But those repro perces weren't cheap at all, imho. Nice, but not cheap.

 

[scant]

magura also made plastic shifter clamps that were fairly cheap

 

[FluffyChicken]

Re:

The irony being that the Alivio/STX are a much better shifter, just had the wrong badges tuck on them and not packaged as nicely other than the really nice clamps, which are nice looking than the other 3rd party clamps.
I'm sure there are some threads with good old dremel usage, but it's reasonable obvious.

 

[Thias]

So it would be best to try and fit the XTR housing onto a STX shifter mech?
But I must admit, I have not yet tried the XTR m900 Shifters. Bought my first set last summer, did not have the right bike to try.
A friend of mine told me, they are not the best. The klick is too hard, he said. Does not give you that precision feeling. I'll have to try.
But they sure look god

 

[FluffyChicken]

Re:

It's quite a soft click (wrt giving feedback to you thumb) and normally quite a bit of friction. Even a clean up (dismantle and rebuild) makes it a bit better. Most the friction is the protective casing though.

They have a tendency to bugger up quite quickly but they do have a nice retro feel if you ever used them BiTD. Many a GripShift convert came from these when they died a few month after new and you where young and didn't dare strip them into all the little pieces.
STX on the other hand are light action and give good feedback with nice padels. That once they are stripped of the thick gunky grease and lubed with light oil/grease.

I run an STX 8spd rear on my M900 brake levers.

 

[Thias]

The STX shifters are god, I totally agree. I bought a bike (also last summer) with a complete STX Group. It was very chaep (40€) and had 2 nearly new looking "relatives of Jon's". I was looking for those tires at the time. I took the bike for a few spins around the woods and was surprisingly pleased by the STX groupset.

But the bikes colors weren't to my taste at all. So I sold the complete STX for 50€ - thats half the price of a decent pair of XTR shifters, now I think of it