Paint and build a front racked town bike

OK, so the forks I spent so long painting are out because the steerer is not sufficient. Some cheap chromed ones will stand in for now.

But the build throws another spanner in the works, or... the indexing actually.

Everything I read says that Shimano rear derailleur pull ratios did not change between 6 and 10 speed. But my beautiful 6207 does not work with the Shimano compatible thumb shifters I got. It moves almost two cogs for each clock and exhausts the cassette in the 6th position (well, the latter follows from the former because maths).

This is pretty upsetting, because it is beautiful and was supposed to be a key piece of the groupset, complimenting the cranks. Bums.

Tried a DA 7700 series RD, and lo and behold, things work.

Did a little more digging. The 6207 is listed on velobase as friction only. So it appears to be (just one model) before indexing was introduced in the first place, and as such is not subject to statements like "all 6 through 9 speed Shimano indexing is compatible".

The DA 7700 was in the parts bin, and it doesn't look bad, but it's not going to clear the 34 tooth cog I bought to offset the 52/42 up front when carrying loads up hills. The 6207 I got is the long cage version, which I was super chuffed to find. As far as I can tell, if the 7700 even had a long cage version, it wasn't made in enough numbers to reach ebay today.

So, options:

• Friction shift. I'm guessing friction shifting 9 speeds is a bit of a faff. They're getting quite close together. Oh, and the shifter I bought doesn't have a friction mode.
  
• Get a 600 SIS indexed (e.g. 6208) RD. They aren't as pretty, and long cages seems v rare.
  
• Get a 28 tooth cassette, keep the 7700. Might be the best bet. Sucks though, cos everything else beneath the handlebars is 600 series, and looks lovely matchy.
  
  

On the plus side, very happy with how things are looking (bad photo, saddle temporary).