Old Shifters

The bicycle derailleurs that shift the chain from one gear cog to another are springloaded, continually pressuring the derailleur toward the smaller cogs. The shifters can counter this by friction, detents, ratchets or internal springs. Most shifters back in the day used friction, which tended to unexpectedly upshift halfway up a hill, just when you really needed the big gears. Suntour developed a ratcheting systen that resisted the upshift, and Simplex used springloaded shifters. For the Kvale I'm building up, I've chosen the Simplex option, although in my case they were manufactured by Simplex and marketed as Mavic.