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Upgraded replacement Pulley wheels?

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Upgraded replacement Pulley wheels?

Old 06-05-20, 07:42 AM
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Mattyb13
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Upgraded replacement Pulley wheels?

2017 Specialized Diverge Comp carbon.
105 11sp Groupset
ultegra 11-28 cassette
Praxis 50/34 chainrings
Dura Ace chain.
Taken this bike in the road vs. gravel direction. ~4500 miles on the bike. Derailleur pulley wheels are wearing and getting loud, cleaned and lubed them. Thinking about replacing. Not sure what to do.
Anyone have experience with aftermarket pulley wheels with bearings vs. the bushings in my current pulley wheels?
I am seeing them from Kogel, BBinfinite, Omni Racer, and some off brand Ebay options.
Omni racer offers a $50 pair on Ebay that looks well made, includes real bearings, and if I was going to invest the $20 into new stock pulley wheels anyways the net investment into would be $30. Not bad for an experiment. Not sure about $100 for afermarket pulley wheels? Thats aggressive.
I am not looking for massive gains as a result of adding aftermarket pulley wheels, but something with bearings vs. bushings has to be an upgrade. Plus if they support nice shifting performance and look good, thats cool too.
Thanks for any feedback.
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Old 06-05-20, 07:53 AM
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Steelman54 
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My opinion is just get a pair that work/fit your 105 setup, maybe even Shimano if they will sell them. Can't see spending 50 bucks for these, as you won't notice/feel anything. Again, just my opinion. Mike
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Old 06-05-20, 08:00 AM
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billridesbikes
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$100 for pulley wheels? That’s amateur night.
You can get some Ti CeramicSpeed pulley wheels for a cool $1000.
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Old 06-05-20, 08:29 AM
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woodcraft
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I don't think I've heard that before-

pulley wheels are wearing and getting loud.
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Old 06-05-20, 08:42 AM
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TakingMyTime
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I don't know, if I was riding in the dirt and wearing down my pulleys that fast I don't think I'd want to be dumping a lot of cash into designer pulleys. Buy some average cost replacement pulleys and just replace them when needed. It's not that difficult to install replacements, even if you're having to do it more often than expected.
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Old 06-05-20, 10:49 AM
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Originally Posted by Mattyb13
2017 Specialized Diverge Comp carbon.
Omni racer offers a $50 pair on Ebay that looks well made, includes real bearings, and if I was going to invest the $20 into new stock pulley wheels anyways the net investment into would be $30. Not bad for an experiment. Not sure about $100 for afermarket pulley wheels? Thats aggressive.
You can get a set of Dura Ace ball bearing jockey wheels for under $30.

Have a look at this site from CeramicSpeed. Given they're in the business of trying to sell people funky jockey wheels for over $500 I think we can trust that their bar graphs paints the watts lost situation in the absolute grimmest light possible. If we take that graph at face value your 105 pulleys (assuming they're not actually worn out) might absorb as much as 1.175 watts. An upgrade to the Dura Ace ones for under $30 would save you about 1 watt of that. Every option more expensive than that would be saving you literally just hundredths of a watt. And still that Dura Ace pulley upgrade is still costing you around $30/watt saved. That's not cheap.

I could see someone wanting to move from bushings to bearings, or if they get a colored aftermarket set to match their jockey wheels to the rest of their bike's color scheme or some other aesthetic benefit. I think any upgrade beyond those two considerations is a mind-boggling waste of money, and some would argue that the upgrade to the Dura Ace jockey wheels from something like Ultegra just to get bearings instead of bushings is a waste of money, and I'd have a hard time arguing against it.
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Old 06-05-20, 12:23 PM
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Originally Posted by billridesbikes
$100 for pulley wheels? That’s amateur night.
You can get some Ti CeramicSpeed pulley wheels for a cool $1000.
Go big or go home!
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Old 06-05-20, 12:55 PM
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You can get the KCNC ultra pulley wheel for $36. Looks nice, but I don't have any idea about gains. Or just get the cheap plastic replacements.
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