When Josh Kato won the 2015 tour divide with the tightest ever margin of 46 minutes covering the first 3 riders, his bike was an exercise in mechanical resilience. He used a 3x crank, a reverse normal derailleur that would default to the lowest gear if he had a rear cable failure, with 9 speed bar-end shifters he could set on friction, to rule out any indexing issues. He also used cable brakes.
I get the feeling Josh would like the Growtac Equal Control stepless (friction) cabled brake/gear levers.
I have been using the Growtac Equal cable brake calipers since a friend got me a pair from Japan last year, and it just so happened that he was back in Japan again this year when they launched their new Equal Control brake/gear levers on the Japanese market. I got in touch with Growtac and I was very lucky to be able to purchase a pair and have my friend pick them up. He even got a tour of the factory. So jealous.
What makes the Equal Control Levers different to other set-ups? Two things. They are cable brakes, and they are step-less (friction) shifters.
Why would you want friction shifting?
Good question. The main reason is compatibility options. You are not locked into proprietary ecosystems by your shifters. 8, 10, 11, 12 or 13 speeds, it doesn't matter how many. You can just throw any wheel on the back and change your chain, or maybe not, depending on what you are changing from.
The Equal Control Levers come with variously sized spools (winding-pullies) that you can install to enable different cable pulls. If you want to, you can run an MTB rear derailleur or a road derailleur. You might have to tweak the limit screws at the start and finish of the range just to be safe. It's just a matter of looking at their chart and installing the appropriate spool. Not having to adjust the shifters to keep them in tune might also be seen as an advantage.
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| Spools (winding pullies) in diameters of 17, 18.5, 20, 22 and 24 mm |
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| Graphic from the Growtac website |
It's not like a thumbie or a bar end shifter, the lever returns to the start after each shift, nothing like a Gevenalle shifter. I haven't measured it but you can probably dump about 4 or 5 gears in each direction with a good long push of the lever. There is no return mechanism, you just push back on the inside lever to change in the opposite direction. It looks a little like a Campagnolo set-up with the little lever on the inside of the hood.
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| Pull back the hood, unscrew the cover and insert your cable in here. |
What else can you do?
Well, according to one of their video demos you can wire the left shifter to connect it to the right, so you can use the left shifter to change in one direction, and the right shifter the other. I haven't tried it, largely because I haven't worked out how to do it yet.... Plus, I may use my left shifter to go back to 2x. Of course there is nothing to stop you putting the majority of your gears on the left, if you wanted to, very handy if you had a disability with your right hand.
For those people who can't deal with the "step-less" life, you will be able to install indexing plates to get the clicks that tell you what gear you are in. At the time of purchase 2 months ago the SRAM 11 speed indexing plates were not yet available. I'm not sure if they are now, I am running fully friction and expect to stay with that.
Weight
The weight of the Growtac Equal Control levers is 210 grams each. Substantially heavier than the crazy light 140 gram Sram Red cabled levers that they replaced on my bike. By comparison a Microshift Sword lever is around 270 grams. Who else is making cabled drop-bar brakes? I'm not sure, Shimano 105 11 speed are 250 grams each, Ultegra 212 grams, Durace are 186 grams.
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| Comparing the Growtac Equal Control levers to the weight weener standard Sram Reds. |
Feel
The levers feel quite narrow. More like a Sram Red mechanical brake hood but with even less girth. They should work well for smaller hands. I was initially wondering about the amount of room for my thumbs on the inside of the hoods, between the levers and the inside shifter, but once I mounted them on the bike it was not an issue. The hoods material is nothing special, smooth and thin. The inside shifter has quite a sharp edge to it although I didn't notice it getting in the way at all.
Tuneability
Friction - There is a slot at the top front of the brake lever where you can adjust the amount of friction you feel in the shift levers with a 3 mm allen key. Growtac recommend riding with a tool at the ready on your first rides as the shifters bed in.
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| Graphic from Growtac website |
Reach - The levers come with two little plastic shims that allow you to adjust the brake lever reach to varying degrees. The shift paddle reach is adjusted from just in front of the shifter, below the pivot.
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| Inserts to adjust reach. Note the different heights. |
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| Location of reach adjustment inserts |
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| Shift paddle reach adjuster |
Materials
The brake/shifter body appears to be made from some kind of plastic with a similar surface appearance to a Campagnolo Ekar shifter.
Setting them up
The set-up is quite a bit more involved than most shifter set-ups, and you would have to say the process seems more aimed at the person who likes to do his own wrenching, or your local bike shop. There is a little plastic cable sleeve that has to be installed, and a small plastic guide you have to be careful not to dislodge, to help keep the action smooth. If you need to install a different spool for a different rear derailleur you will need to pull back the hood rubbers and get in there with a screwdriver to swap out the spool. You will need to pull back the hoods anyway to route the cable. The brake cable sits in a small alloy cup that needs to be installed when you install the cable. It fits into the moulded brake lever. I missed this and had to re-route my front brake cable again. So if you are not a home mechanic your local bike shop might be a better course of action. The instructions were all in Japanese on my set but were very extensive and easily decipherable using Google Translate.
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| Cable installation is slightly tricky compared to most shift levers. Note the short plastic liner. |
How do they shift?
This is the most interesting part. You just assume that because there is no indexing that it's going to be a clunky gadunkadunka kind of experience but it couldn't be further from the truth. As my sceptical Di2 died in the wool buddy said in our chat group after a very short ride "Not what I expected, sits between mechanically indexed and di2 for the majority of the shifts for smoothness and a lot quieter than mechanical".
It appears to me that the nature of chains and sprockets is that a chain will naturally find the teeth and just hook up, not getting stuck in between gears as you might imagine. You don't feather the shifts either as you might on an old downtube shifter set-up. You change gear positively and dump as many gears as you like. I find indexed gears very noisy now by comparison.
To date I have done a couple of months commuting, weekend trail rides and three Cyclo Cross races on them and have found them to be great. Hopefully I get a chance to do some bikepacking on them soon, or at least some longer rides to see if I have any issues. So far my longest rides are around the 3 hour mark on local MTB trails. Watch this space.
See below the official video from the Growtac Youtube channel.
Some videos I've done myself (below).
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| Image from Don Johnson - https://workingtechnology.pic-time.com/ - Huttcross |
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