noodle soup

Time to start looking for a great price on a 50t 9000 ring. I’m fine right now, but have about 20k miles on the big ring, and use that over 99% of the time.

Amt0571

I switched from a 3x8 to a 2x11 and I'm not faster than before.

It's nice having less gap between gears as it makes it easier to find your ideal cadence, but I think this is the only advantage.

Maybe if you compete or care a lot about your times it makes a small difference.

I think that's all. I have not had problems with 11 speed chain durability yet.

Kimmo 

With 11s, you get to upgrade to weaker rear wheels. Because that's the one you want to be weaker. Mavic somehow saw this coming and has been making weaker rears for ages just in case.

BBB do rings for those cranks with little cosmetic bits to make it look less crap.

MoAlpha

My 5800 > 7800 > 6800, but all are pretty good.

Kimmo 

Those 11s FDs can work very well, but if the cable is coming from too close to the drive side, you're screwed - the trim position usually won't work without faffing at the lever. I had one bike i had to work on with a housing stop on the inside of the right chainstay, couldn't make it work at all without clamping another housing stop on the bottom of the seat tube.

noodle soup

+1

7800 is possibly the smoothest ever produced, but it's getting hard to find NOS 7800 stuff these days, unless you are willing to pay a premium for it.

noodle soup

While this is a "fact", it's not an issue. Campagnolo has been using hubs with the same geometry since they went to 9 speed, and it's not an issue.

Mavic knew that the hub geometry wasn't a problem almost 20 years ago, When will you figure it out?

Ninetimes

I run Campy 10 on everything. I don’t race and really don’t see the need for 11 or 12. And the old 10 is so pretty anyway. To get around the gearing with the chainrings at 53/39, I’ve dropped in medium cage rear derailleurs with all my bikes. That gets me into to 13/29 and 12/30 rear cassettes. Solves the issues for hills. The all steel cassettes can be had for 50 bucks, so I’ve got a shelf full of ‘em now. The more people move to the 11’s or 12’s, the more 10 for me on the cheap.



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MoAlpha

I paid an eye-watering amount in 2014 when I decided to begin riding for fun again after a few decades off and had my old racing frame cold set to 130mm. If I’d known where it would lead, I would have just bought a mid-level plastic bike and some good shoes.

Re the question, I barely noticed it when I got my first 11-speed system.

Kimmo 

It's first principles, man. Just cause you can make it work doesn't make it a good idea; you gotta use more metal to compensate. Complete wheelsets mostly seem reasonably solid, but I was pretty unhappy with the NDS tension on a couple of rears I built up on 11s 105 hubs.

The thing that really bugs me is that such poor flange spacing isn't even necessary; I squeezed a 10s cassette onto a 7s cassette body, so it should be possible to make 11s need less room than a standard 10s cassette body. Shimano just doesn't try hard enough at that IMO, let alone anyone else.

Actually, the flange spacing on Caden's Decadence hubs is one exception. I hate on cartridge bearings and noisy floating cassette bodies, so I got hold of a set of Dura-Ace wheels with the 21h rear to cannibalise, but when I compared the hubs, Caden's flange spacing was so much better I thought stuff it and started wondering how to quieten the ratchet. Not to mention the looks; the Caden hubs are sleek AF and make the Shimano ones look ugly as sin.

If you've got nothing against cartridge bearings and half-arsed noisy freehubs, these babies are the bomb. The front wheel actually looks a bit weird with this really slim and wide hub with the spokes so close to the dropouts they might even foul the occasional fork...

Long story short, IMO flange spacing is so fundamental to a good wheel that I'm prepared to forego proper hub guts for it. Definitely couldn't give a stuff about another cog, unless 11s cassettes that only go down to 12t become a thing.

shelbyfv

Won't the current 142mm rear standard resolve this?

daoswald

My hybrid bike is 3x8. I sometimes feel slightly less efficient on flat sections because I'm hunting for the ideal gear that may be between two gear ratios I have available. But that's pretty rare; my typical rides don't have a lot of flat terrain, so I'm usually looking for breadth of gearing, not that perfect "cruise along flat ground at 18mph" gear. When I was first getting used to the bike it seemed to matter more. Now that I'm accustomed to it, I just pedal a little faster sometimes.

My road bike is 3x10. On flat terrain I'm able to get the more ideal gear for my desired cruising speed. But again, I don't have that much flat terrain around; everything seems to be either rolling hills or painful hills. The triple is useful, in that regard. If I went to a compact double, I would still need a gear that gets me close to 1:1, and would probably find 11sp more useful to obtain that breadth of range while still having sweet-spot gears for the -1 to +1% flats.

But we do tend to get used to what we ride. And unless you are really trying to get that last little bit of efficiency for racing purposes, the extra gear in an 11sp cassette isn't all that important. Well.... more important if you have a 1x drivetrain, but for a 2x or 3x drivetrain, not important.

I do buy the argument that the 11sp drivetrains shift better. That may more about improved shifting technology, though. If 10sp drivetrains were still the norm, by now that better shifting technology would have found its way to them.

redlude97

tiagra 4700 uses the new cable pull and geometry of 11 speed in a 10 speed setup and it works just as well

tomato coupe

If you're the kind of person who always gives 110%, you're going to want to upgrade from 10-spd to 11-spd.

noodle soup

Amt0571

That's why they invented 142mm frame spacing, I suppose.

Not that I'm defending new bicycle related "inventions". I still cringe when I see people riding mountain bikes with a single chainring and a sprocket bigger than a frying pan with less gear range than a 15 year old 3x9 bike.

datlas 

But.....BUT....it's ONE-BY....that's the future!

Amt0571

A future with less gear range and worse gear spacing than a 15 year old bike. Sounds great. Great if you're missing a hand or are mentally unable to manage a couple of shifters.

Bob Ross

I think you answered your own question.

noodle soup

I'm not saying 1x on the road isn't stupid, but do you really need a wider gear range than 18.5" - 92.5" for mountain biking?


BTW, a 32/22 crankset with an 11-32t cassette, that was common 15 years ago, has a range of 19.9" - 84.2"

colnago62

The smartest thing I have ever done, other than switching to Di2, was stop building my own wheels. I find that wheels built by my current sources don’t need truing and don’t brake spokes for the life of the wheel. Bontrager now has a lifetime warranty on their wheels. When I was building my own, the lifespan was nowhere near that of the professionally built wheels I buy now. I believe 11 speed spacing has less fudge factor, but built correctly, have no issue at all and I am very heavy.

DaveSSS 

12 speed is already here and eventually Shimano will catch up with SRAM and Campy. The trend with 12 speed is to increase range, not the decrease the spacing between sprockets. The sprocket spacing on the new Campy 11-34 is 11-12-13-14-15-16-17-19-22-25-29-34. It retains all of the close spacing, up to the 19T, before increasing the percentage of change between the sprockets. The tightest spacing 11-29 is the same, up to the 19, then it's 21-23-26-29. Some users are whining that there is no 11-27 that includes an 18T. I've never opted to have a cassette with an 18T sprocket.

As for the rear wheel dish, it's been the same for Campy since 9 speed in 1997. Campy solves the spoke tension issue by using half as many spokes on the nondrive side as seen in the Fulcrum 2:1 pattern or with groups of three spokes - two for the drive side and one for the nondrive side. The current Zonda wheels are very reasonably priced. They use 16 spokes on the front, radially laced and 21 spokes in the rear - 7 groups of 3 spokes.

redlude97

Do you mean 135mm QR MTB spacing? That has more to do with disc brakes than hub geometry since almost every hub now has interchangeable endcaps to switch between standards

Amt0571

If you have a cassette with that range, you have huge jumps between gears. I don't want huge jumps, and I want a wide range. There are transmissions that allow it, so I don't understand why everybody buys the stupid 1x.

Since my mates switched to 1x, I can easily drop them on any descent over a good surface, and I can climb with a higher cadence when things get hairy. I don't get what's the advantage of 1x over my 3x10. It probably weights less, but you end up being slower because it's less flexible.

When I replace my mountain bike, I'm going to choose a double chainring bike exactly for this reason.

noodle soup

I was quite skeptical about 1x for mountain bikes, but for the terrain in the SW US, it works amazingly well. I wouldn’t want it on rolling terrain, but for areas with rapidly changing climbs/descents, it’s a great setup.

dropped chains are a thing of the past, even over the rockiest terrain.

On rolling terrain I miss the close ratios, but there’s still enough gear inches available to really get moving.

1x Road is stupid.