Upgraded my full Ultegra bike to full 105 with great results
I took the 16 year old 6500 Ultegra triple crank 9 speed set off and replaced it with the 105 R7000 11 speed set that just came out 5 months ago. It's like a new bike! Shifting is much faster and easier. Instead of taking a full turn or two of the crank to shift, making lots of noise, it now shifts quietly in about a quarter turn. The dual pivot brakes look very cool. The Hollow tech bottom bracket alone saved me about half a pound. The compact 34-50 compact crank made me lose the 30 tooth low front gear. With my 69 year old knees, and everything else I was worried about riding the long steep hills on all of my rides so I made a frankin bike with a Woolf Tooth Roadlink, dropping my rear derailleur a half an inch so I'm able to run an 11-40 MTB cassette on the back. Everything went together well, but I had to take the B screw on the rear derailleur out and put it in backwards to drop the jockey wheels further. The first time I shifted into the 40 I thought my chain had fallen off because peddling as fast as I could, the freehub didn't engage until I slowed a few MPH. It's has no trouble making the jump from 35 to 40 gear. I was happy with 9 gears, 11 is just going to confuse me, but the bike was ghost shifting, dropping the chain a lot, it made noises in 1/2 of the gear combinations and when I tried to sprint up hill out of saddle the rear cassette would cross chain and freeze up. It was time to go, it served me very well for 10s of thousands of miles. I'll keep it in a box in a special place.
Last edited by John00; 10-09-18 at 08:14 PM.