Finally got around to sticking the Growtac friction brifters on a bike tonight.
They’re very plastic-y, mostly made of a very high carbon-fill material - maybe something like a 20-30% GF PPA? Very high-quality feeling plastic, whatever it is. Several of the screws are self tapping straight into the plastic - feels kinda bad on one hand but on the other hand I design a lot of plastic assemblies with screws like these at work and if you only need single-digit cycle life they’re great (and cheap). The main one that you’ll need to fuck with - the cover for the shift mechanism - has a threaded insert in the plastic and a machine screw, so they’ve got your back there.
Installing the shift cable is maybe the single most hateful bike component installation process I’ve ever experienced. The hoods simply CAN NOT be pulled back far enough to actually fully uncover the shift mechanism. You will always stretching the hood back with one hand while juggling tiny parts and screws and screwdrivers with the other. There are also little fiddly bits to guide the shift cable that can go “sproing” out of the lever if you’re not careful. I strongly recommend doing this with a friend. Also be aware that you can’t install the shift housing with the lever clamped down to the bars - it’s just too tight of an entry angle. If you’re the kind of person who likes to get the levers placed perfectly and aligned before you cut the shift housing to length, don’t bother… you’ll end up having to do it all over again. Also note that you need good access to the bottom of the lever for a variety of reasons: if you’ve got a porteur rack/wald basket/etc, strongly consider taking it off temporarily for the install process. I regretted not doing this and trying to power through.
I fucked up, in my frustration I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing and hooked the left lever up to the rear derailleur and vice versa, so I’m gonna have to do that all over again. Oof.
In contrast, I can’t think of another lever that I’ve had an easier time installing the brake cables. They just go straight in, zero fuss, no trying to blindly find some tiny hole in the lever body behind the cable anchor. That said: there’s a conical spacer thingy that need to go under the cable head, presumably to spread the load over a larger area in the plastic brake lever. It would be really nice if this was pressed/molded into the brake lever, instead of a loose part that can be dropped and lost…
They seem really comfortable in the hand. They’re long enough that you can get your whole hand on them - similar to my R8000 Ultegra brifters, longer than the Tektro R200 levers Gevenalle uses, not doofy-long like a Hylex. They are VERY slim with a very nicely rounded top; probably great for small hands. The brake lever action is very smooth, as is the shift action.
Here’s what they have to say about cable spool sizes:
The levers come with the 18.5mm spool installed in the right lever and the 17mm spool installed in the left lever. The right lever comes with a spare set of 17/20/22/24mm spools as well, the left lever comes with zero other spools. So if you want the 17mm in both levers you can do that, but if you want 2x of any of the other sizes you’re SOL.
I’m using an 11-speed Deore XT RD-M8000 in the rear and an XTR FD-M986 with a double up front. Eyeing the chart, I swapped the right lever over the 22mm spool and the left lever over to the 18.5mm that I’d liberated from the right lever. But because of the aforementioned snafu with which-shift-cable-goes-to-which-lever, I’ve got the 18.5mm spool to the rear derailleur and the 22mm to the front derailleur…
The rear seems fine with the 18.5mm, even though I’m way out of the “MTB RD” zone on the chart? It’s three full sweeps of the lever to go end-to-end on the cassette, which is great because the full range of the shifter is 3-and-a-bit full sweeps. This makes sense, as a Shimano MTB-11 setup really only needs 35mm of cable pull… Shift action is super light and I can pick off single-gear shifts easily in both directions.
On the other hand, the FD needs more than one full pump of the lever to fully shift between the two chainrings even with the 22mm spool, so I think I want to move all the way up to the 24mm…?