So, has anyone here tried shimming STI shifters that are not of the shimmable variety? I have regular Ultegra STI 9 speed shifters from 2003 - pre-shim era. I just had a fitting over the weekend, which involved lots of changes, including rolling the bars up, a shorter stem, etc. Now on the drops I just barely can get the end of my index finger around the brake lever (it was a reach before, but not like this). Anyway, rather than spend $270 on Shimano R600 (the 9 speed version), I was thinking maybe I could rig something up. My LBS has a set of 4 degree and set of 8 degree shims that somebody didn't use, so maybe I could try cutting off the little knobs and glue the shims in place. I'm going to take the bike in and see if one set of the shims will work, but the shop owner was talking about having to adjust the brakes quite close, and the wheels having to be super-true for it to work, and it still possibly not working. Anyway, I'm going to check it out. Maybe I can do this for $10, rather than $270 + labor.

Ideally, I would win the lottery in the meantime, and would just upgrade to 10 speed Dura-Ace all around! Hmmm - my anniversary is in 2 weeks - isn't 18 years supposed to be something like "really cool bike components"?

So, if anybody has tried this, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks,
Jan