L-TWOO R9 mechanical shifters

When I bought a Tacx Neo 3M trainer, I decided to set my partner's bike up on the old first generation Tacx Neo. It was still pretty functional, if a little noisy, and I thought it might be fun to ride together on a virtual cycling platform. Prior to this, her bike was mounted on an old non-smart Cateye CycleSimulater trainer.

With a switch to a smart trainer and a virtual cycling platform came the need for easy to manage gear shifting. I'd had the bike set up with old Campagnolo 8-speed gears with Ergo-levers. But I had an 11-speed cassette mounted on the Neo trainer. Poking around in my parts bin unearthed a pair of Shimano rear mechs, one 9-speed and one 10-speed, and a bar end shifter that could be set in friction mode. I swapped out the Campagnolo rear mech and installed the 10-speed Shimano mech with the bar end shifter set in friction mode. All was well with that arrangement, except gear shifting was a little inconvenient with the bar end shifter.

I spent some time poking around the web, looking at Shimano shifters for mechanical brakes and gears, but they all seemed pretty expensive for a trainer mounted bike facing only occasional use. I'd seen L-TWOO components featured on some YouTube videos where they seemed to get pretty good reviews, and took a look at AliExpress to see what was out there.

What's interesting with the L-TWOO range is that they produce levers to match all sorts of brake and gear configurations, from 7 to 12-speed, and for cable or hydraulic braking. The R9 levers seemed to fit the bill, being designed for compatibility with 11-speed Shimano gearing. The AliExpress listings were pretty vague about the braking system, but as far as I could tell they were for cable disc brakes.

L-TWOO R9 levers are delivered with gear cables installed

In use, these levers use the same 'shifting logic' as Campagolo ergolevers - the paddle behind the brake lever shifts to larger sprockets (lower gears), while the thumb lever drops the chain to smaller cogs (to higher gears). The levers are delivered with gear cables installed. I don't know if this is because fitting the cables is a fiddly job, but it was useful. 

Fitting the levers and connecting brake and gear cables was pretty straightforward once I'd figured out the routing for the outer cables and where the hex key bolt was located under the hood. Getting the gears to index was a little more hassle.

On my bike set up on the Tacx Neo 3M, I have bar end shifters (this is a TT bike rig) set to friction. So indexing isn't an issue. On this new set up, recall the rear mech was 10-speed and the shifters and cassette were 11-speed. This arrangement almost worked, but shifting was really a bit ragged. I just couldn't get all the gears operating smoothly. After a bit of concern that the gear hanger was possible bent (it wasn't, as far as I could tell), I decided to remove the 10-speed mech and replace it with the 9-speed mech.

And then the gear shifting worked properly. I presume the two mechs, both of which are Dura-Ace, differ in some aspect of cable pull.

In use, these levers are pretty good, with shifting as precise as you might expect from budget levers. The left shifter does a pretty precise shift between the 52 and 39 rings on an ancient chainset with an even more ancient front mech. The right shifter can shift one gear at a time with the thumbshift button, and 1 or 2 gears on a throw of the shift paddle. As the bike is on an indoor trainer, the brake functions haven't been tested. I don't know if the cable pull will work on rim brakes. 

For the purposes of gear shifting on a trainer-mounted bike these are admirable value for money. Would I fit them to a bike for outdoor use? I'd actually be more interested in setting up an L-TWOO gear/brake system on a bike, if I were to be adding a bike to the stable (which I'm not - one bike in, one bike out is the rule in our house!).

I bought the L-TWOO R9 levers from AliExpress. The price (including VAT) was £57.44, and the order fell below the threshold for Import Duty.

This was my first foray into buying kit via AliExpress and I'd say the experience was good. I was kept informed by daily emails about the progress of the order which arrived surprisingly quickly. On the downside, I have had loads of product emails from AliExpress, so I had to unsubscribe from the mailings.