Originally Posted by
elcruxio
Sora is the only current shimano road groupset with a triple. The 520 has brifters so Sora is the only option for that sort of gearing.
The rack can be used as lowrider. The top platform is neat for groceries / extra tagalong stuff.
1X just really kinda sucks for road touring (or road riding in general). Even with a 12s the gear spacing is frankly massive if you want any sort of high end paired with decent climbing gearing. With a 3x you get a tighter gearing AND the ability to fine tune with the front chainrings, which lets me pretty much always ride in a comfortable gear.
1x especially sucks when riding with a partner because you're not as free to pick your speed / cadence. I wouldn't want a 10-50 even when riding solo however. When riding my 10-50 bike on the road gear jumps always either drop me to spin out land or push to grind city. Excellent for offroad, but just really horrible on the road.
Trek advertises the 520 as "
a comfortable steel workhorse that's capable of everything from daily rides to expedition tours". An expedition tourer should have bar end shifters. You need the friction mode to keep the bike running after derailleur damage.
The platformed front racks are terrible to ride with. They place more weight far from the steering axis, which make the bars harder to turn. On an expedition tour when you are heavily loaded and grinding up a hill slowly, that kind of front load will make the bike extremely difficult to balance at low speed. You may be forced to walk in situations where someone else can ride. Lowrider racks place your panniers right next to the steering axis so the front end has less moment of inertia. If you care about handling that's the only place you'll put luggage. At that point the large rack is just dead weight.
I hear you on the 1X gear jump spacing but in this particular case a modern 12 speed 1X drivetrain actually has tighter spacing jumps than the 9 speed cassette Trek put on this 520. See the charts below. Back when we all toured on 8 speed cassettes nobody ever complained about spacing tightness. 8 is better than 7, 7 is better than 6. People get spoiled as time passes so I think this may be a case of imagination causing flawed memory.
If you want to fine tune your cadence on the 3X9 to beat the tightness of a 1x12, you'll have to shift the front, then shift the rear several cogs and pray you end up with a combination that is in between what the 1x12 guy has available. You'll have to do this every time your speed changes slightly. I don't know anyone who rides in this way. People just stay in the same front chainring that suits the local geography, only moving between chainrings when they bottom out or top out.
