Discussion of wide ratio 10spd Cassettes

coursemyhorse

I've been watching with interest the market gradually introduce newer tech around 1x10 setups with wide ratio cassettes. We had 11-34 cassettes, then 11-36. But for some, there is still a compromise slightly when running an 11-36 cassette. Some people are excited about the potential to run a slightly wider gear spread like 9-36, or 11-40 but still being able to keep with a simple 1x10 setup and no front derailleur. I thought I would summarize everything I have seen talked about so far and make a thread where we can discuss potential upcoming products in this area.

Hope 9x36 Cassette



Was talked about in 2011 and prototyped by Hope, but nothing came of it. This would have involved running a Hope Hub in addition to purchasing said newly developed 9x36 tooth cassette. Cost estimate to convert to this system would be in the region of £200-300 if a new Hope hub was also required. There was some skepticism of running with a 9tooth cog as it could be susceptible to increased wear.


Canfield Brothers 9T Microdrive



This is available right now and on sale on canfieldbrothers.com retailing at $380. There are reports of people running this setup on other forums in the US. Criticism is mainly aimed again at the price, in that it costs $380 and that is without adding on the necessary SRAM Cassette to make up the rest of the cogs required for the system to run. The hub also weighs in at 400g which is a little on the heavy side. Again, the 9tooth cog could be susceptible to higher wear rates.


SRAM XX1



The dedicated thread is HERE with regard to when it was announced and bikeradar forum reaction. Prices are still very high to convert to this system, as the idea by SRAM is to pitch at the top end of the market requiring the whole XX1 11 speed setup components to properly convert. Current pricing for the XX1 cassette is £296, the rear mech £215 and the chainset £211. This totals in excess of £700. It will be interesting to see how much of this technology trickles down to SRAM's lower level line ups like eventually X9 becoming more affordable. Or will something else be dominant before that time.


General Lee 25-40 Tooth Adapter



I first heard of this only the other day, but has been known about for a couple of months. This is manufactured by Leonardi Racing in Italy. It is available to purchase from http://www.leowheels.it and also is available via Ebay sellers in US and Portugal when I checked today. It retails for around £100-£120. This repalces the last 4 largest cogs of your SRAM 1030, 1050 and/or 1070 cassette giving a total range of 11-40 tooth. It weighs 190g so is slightly lighter than the part it replaces from these cassettes apparently.
An article from another mtb website states that in their testing they managed to pair it with both a Shimano Zee Rear Derailleur and also a SRAM mid cage X9 rear derailleur. Both worked fine, but the SRAM worked better and more smoothly as you would expect, with a larger cog capacity.
This looks to be the first real effort to produce a light enough and more affordable wide range cassette. The ratios I will not cover here in detail, but if you currently run with a 32/11-36 setup, you could move to a 34/11-40 setup and gain gearing ratios at both ends.
The cost of £100-£120 does obviously not include buying a new compatible SRAM cassette if required. So the total cost could be around £150.
Shimano and SRAM would have you believe that their Derailleurs will not support capacities of 11-40 teeth, but it appears they will. It could be problematic and more costly for some people if this setup is attempted with short cage rear mechs as mentioned above.



38 and 41 Tooth Custom Ebay Cog



Just search ebay for "38 tooth cassette". You will find a seller in the US that makes these stainless 38 tooth cogs. This is designed to fit behind your rear most cogs on your existing Shimano or SRAM cassette, and then you exclude a single cog of your choice further down your cassette. Pros are that this is cheap at around £20-30, probably fairly durable being stainless and also if the 38 tooth is used then even short cage derailleurs should be able to cope with capacity easily (possibly). Cons are that the 38 tooth consequently weighs 175g alone, and the 41 tooth 230g.

http://hellore.se/experimentalprototype/

Here is a company based in Sweden that will custom make such items as one off 38/40 tooth sprockets to adapt to cassettes. A forum member on another mtb forum got a custom 39T sprocket made for a SRAM cassette. Prices are probably not cheap. Quality is apparently high.




Does anyone have any other ideas or know of any other designs being brought to the table? Rumours? Thoughts?

How long until we see an afforable 11-38 tooth cassette from one of the more major MTB manufacturers if at all? What will be the most commonly affordable and highly adopted wide range cassette otpions available for 1x10 systems over the next 6-12 months? 12-24 months?

All discussion welcome.

Chunkers1980

I'll continue using a triple. Middle most of the time and granny and big when I need them.

njee20

I've got a titanium chainring from Experimental Prototype, as you say quality is good, and price wasn't unreasonable.

X01 is coming next year, dunno about cheaper groupsets. Considering the expensive part is the cassette, and an X.0 cassette isn't really that much cheaper than an XX one, still more than XTR, I'm not sure how much more affordable it will really be!

coursemyhorse

njee20 wrote:

I've got a titanium chainring from Experimental Prototype, as you say quality is good, and price wasn't unreasonable.

X01 is coming next year, dunno about cheaper groupsets. Considering the expensive part is the cassette, and an X.0 cassette isn't really that much cheaper than an XX one, still more than XTR, I'm not sure how much more affordable it will really be!

What did you get from them and how much if you don't mind me asking? How was the service and speed of comms etc? How long did it take them to make what you wanted or was it more of an off the shelf selection of stuff they already had? I wonder how much they would knock out a light 38 tooth for.

njee20

About €59 shipped I think. I got lucky because he had the machine set up to make an 88mm BCD (XTR Race) 36t ring, so he just tacked mine on to the order. Comms wasn't amazing, after several chasing emails he claimed to have forgotten, apologised, and then it came very quickly!

It's basically one bloke - Mattias Hellore - with a CNC machine!

coursemyhorse

I emailed him to see how much a light 38 tooth cassette ring would be, that could be mated with a Shimano XT Cassette (and/or SRAM presumably). I guess 38 tooth is a minimal difference for a lot of people. 39 tooth would be good. I'm conscious that 40 tooth is really pushing the limits of short cage rear mech capacity.

njee20

I'm not convinced I'd bother, it'll be comparatively expensive and won't give you a vast improvement. 40t works with SRAM.

lindahl

I'd rather go 11-40T with a cheaper 9-speed drivechain.

SRAM 970 11-32 Cassette ($30 or none since you already have 1 cassette)
SRAM 970 11-34 Cassette ($30 or none since you already have 1 cassette)

Re-arrange the cassettes to produce 8 speeds:
11-13-15-17-20-24-28-34

Buy a 3 or 6-bolt 40T chainring from here ($45):
http://www.bikeville.com/cranks.html
http://www.warhawkindustries.com/386.html

Drill holes and bolt it to the 34T cog:
http://gallery.mtbr.com/showphoto.php/p ... ng/cat/500

Optionally use a SRAM 9-speed shifter with a Medium Cage Shadow Plus Derailleur:
http://forums.mtbr.com/drivetrain-shift ... 66457.html

So yeah.. 11-40T 9 speed for less than $80 and a very minimal amount of DIY work (drill 3/6 holes and use some bolts). If you don't already have a SRAM cassette, it'd be $110.

njee20

Does that actually work though? A chain ring is thicker than a cassette sprocket isn't it?

satanas

Action Tec also make Ti 36,38 & 39T cogs: http://www.actiontec.us/prices.htm (Not especially cheap; need to scroll down a bit.)

Dick Scruttock

Leonardi Racing now offer a 29-35-42 upper cassette to use with SLX and XT cassettes.

anj132

Not sure if that ebay idea is a good one by removing the 11t to make space for the 38t. Surely this decreases the range and you might as well run a smaller chainring.

30 chainring is do-able on 104 bcd such as the raceface wide narrow chainring.

Op - good post with all the options though.

Only thing in not sure about its this jump to the final cog of 38/40. I could imagine the jump being too big. I found that was the case on a 6 speed 14/34 megarange freewheel

njee20

MegaRange ones really do have a colossal jump though, basically it's a 5 speed block with a bail out gear!

I don't see the point in the aftermarket add-on sets that require you to remove a sprocket at the other end of the block, you either narrow the range, rendering it entirely pointless, or you have a huge jump somewhere down the bottom.

The Rookie

And the end result is a heavier cassette too boot!

satanas

Okay then, if you want to have a larger lower gear cog, not lose higher gears, and don't want to have wider gaps between the gears or add an extra cog (or cogs), how is this possible??? :roll:

Chunkers1980

Use a triple.

satanas

^ I was under the impression that this whole discussion was about wider ratio cassettes being used to enable *SINGLE* chaining use, so triple (or double) cranksets would appear to be illegal, or at least out of context.

The Rookie

Ideally to get a wider range we pursuade a manufacturer to make one, if you replace just the lowest gears you end up with a signifant increase in gear spread at just one end, or worse still a 'mega-range' style cassette with one huge ring and then a normal spread cassette, add ing one gear at the lower end and deleting the top gear doesn't change the cassette range.

Kowalski675

satanas wrote:

Okay then, if you want to have a larger lower gear cog, not lose higher gears, and don't want to have wider gaps between the gears or add an extra cog (or cogs), how is this possible??? :roll:

Here's one way:

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/General-Le ... -2013.html

satanas

^ Yes, I knew about that, but as I was somewhat sarcastically implying before, it is NOT POSSIBLE to have a wider range, the same number of cogs and not have the gears further apart, the point I was trying to make. If one doesn't mind bigger gaps between the gears (even or not) then something like the GL adapter makes sense. However, more range without having bigger gaps means more gears are needed - there's no way around this one I'm afraid.

The Rookie

There was no sarcasm detectable.....

satanas

I obviously wasn't trying hard enough, and promise to do better next time!

The Rookie

Please, saves us wasting time replying to it! ;-)

Kowalski675

satanas wrote:

^ it is NOT POSSIBLE to have a wider range, the same number of cogs and not have the gears further apart, the point I was trying to make.

Obviously. If you want the same gap between each ratio, but a wider spread of ratios then obviously you need more cogs. If you want the same number of cogs, but a wider range of ratios then obviosuly the gaps between the ratios will be larger. Unless you can do magic, lol.

njee20

That was his point, made badly.

Be interested to see how long those General Lee adapters last. Considering they cost about 2/3 what an XX1 cassette does, being alu I suspect they won't last that long, or shift that well!

satanas

^^ I was thinking of physics or mathematics, but as Arthur C Clarke famously said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

^ My past experience with alu rear cogs has not been good but on the GL these are rather large, so might be less of an issue. Shifting quality IMO depends more on the shifting aids being well-designed and correctly aligned, so this ought to be possible - it can certainly be done with alu chainrings. Comments on shifting quality I've seen have all said that it's not as good as with the original Shimano/SRAM cogs, but is still entirely acceptable - i.e., it does the job okay.

If I was going to use the GL, I'd definitely be using multiple chains, trying to keep them clean, and rotating them well before any significant elongation took place. However, I'm not convinced that 40T would be different enough in practice from 36T to warrant the extra cost, but YMMV.

edhornby

has anyone on here used these for a year or more? my concern is that the size of the cassette tooth would chew into the freehub body (due to the torque applied when standing on the pedals in the bottom gear..) - anyone seen this happen?

satanas

I'm pretty sure nobody anywhere has had the GL for more than a few months as they only became available this year. Seeing the 3 cogs are on a spider (AFAIK) there's no reason they should damage an alu freehub body. There's no way they'll indent a steel body, and even if they were separate alu cogs they'd still be no harder than the freehub body, and how often have you seen steel cogs indent steel bodies??? In my case never, despite >20 years in the bike industry.

njee20

My past experience with alu rear cogs has not been good but on the GL these are rather large, so might be less of an issue

Indeed, hence why they're the preserve of ultra light cassettes only. The KCNC ones are prone to snapping clean in half, and I've read stories of the Recon ones wearing out in 200kms.

satanas

^ And then there's shifting as well, all of which are reasons why I will be sticking with Shimano/SRAM unless there's a very compelling reason to do otherwise.

On road bikes alu cassettes are less of a problem but typically last <1000km, and don't shift as well as stiffer spidered cassettes with HG or equivalent teeth and ramps. Only fanatics use them - those more interested in weighing their bikes than riding them.

njee20

On road bikes alu cassettes are less of a problem but typically last <1000km

So less than a month of relatively light use. Sounds like a problem to me! Only $160 too.

Admittedly the GL ones should be far better because it's only the bigger sprockets, but I'd not have much faith in them in the long run myself.