robow

Is the 1x a solution looking for a problem ? What do you really gain by getting rid of the front mech ? You have to have a front braking lever anyway, why not incorporate a shifter in it ? A properly adjusted front mech is darn near fool proof with your standard 2x chainring. Bottom line for me is, I could easily switch from a triple to a double chainring on my touring bike with some thought on a wide range cassette but a 1x seems overkill for such little added benefit (bike industry be damned)

Tourist in MSN

The 1X bike sells for the same as a 2X bike, the 2X bike had more component costs and more time spent (labor cost) adjusting the front derailleur. Thus, the 1X needed heavy marketing pitch to convince everyone to buy it.

What really shocked me was how many of the bikes in the Tour Divide race used a 1X system this year. Look for the pie chart labeled Drivetrains. More than three quarters used a 1X system, so they clearly saw an advantage that the rest of us are not seeing. Some may have been sponsored to use specific equipment, but I suspect that is a minority. (Oops, forgot the link initially, added later.)
https://bikepacking.com/bikes/2023-r...ide-breakdown/

A neighbor is a bike mechanic, he said to me that he thinks the reason that Sram went so big on 1X systems is that they could not make a good front derailleur.

I will gladly take my 3X8 system which is 1990s technology over one of those 1X systems.

Last time I had to replace a chain and cassette, cost $25 for the cassette and about $12 for the chain, but with inflation that would probably be more like $40 or $42 now. I hate to think of the cost of a 10-52 cassette. Just googled it. At REI full price, minus 10 percent dividend, minus 5 percent for credit card reward, that is $196 not counting state tax.
https://www.rei.com/product/188096/s...speed-cassette

robow

Is not the ideal goal for any drive train to be, the largest gear range possible with the smallest steps between gears, along with the least complexity, least weight and lowest cost ? The 1x does meet 2 of the 5 criteria so sign me up, ha.

Atlas Shrugged

As with a majority of issues on these forums opinions are based on age demographics more than experience.

No point in arguing each point as the intermixing of facts and age old myths makes it silly. There is a reason that 3x systems have been abandoned by the cycling community is that they are no
longer needed. 11+ speed cassettes and large capacity indexed systems have replaced them.

As for big bike conspiracies denying people choice. I don’t think so.

Tourist in MSN

If you really think that touring with 11 speeds is best, that is your opinion.

I avoid the most cross chained gears on my 3X8 systems, only use 18 of the least cross chained gears. Or, when I use my heavy touring bike with a 14 speed internally geared hub, then I sometimes complain about my narrower gearing range and wider spacing between gears. Those are my opinions. I would not want to tour on your 11 speed system.

While I am content with an 8 speed cassette, a lot of people find that they want a 9 or 10 speed cassette for even more gears than I have.

But you made it clear you would not want to tour on a wider range system with more gear choices. We are not going to convince each other otherwise.

BobG

I replace my cassette annually with a relatively small SS check for income. I'll stick with a 3x9 system ...

Tourist in MSN

Congrats, you got a better price for your 9 speed cassette than I got for my 8 speed.

Last time I bought a Sram 850, cost $25. Bummer, now up to $27. (Knock off 15 percent, 10% for dividend later and 5% for credit card kickback.)
https://www.rei.com/product/698250/s...speed-cassette

I think I last bought chains at Amazon. Now, a hair under $14. Or the Z series chains are a couple bucks cheaper if on a budget.
https://www.amazon.com/KMC-X8-93-Bic...dp/B001MXQHPG/

staehpj1

I don't get how folks wear out cassettes so fast. Mine seem to last pretty much forever. I have some with a lot of miles on them and they stil run quietly and shift smoothly. My favorite road old bike has at least 100K miles on it and is still running the original cassette. I have a number of other high mileage cassettes that are all doing fine. I have long chain ring life as well, but have seen a bit more wear with rings than cogs. Still even the rings last me a very long time. I don't swap chains all that often, but do so before they measure too much more than 12-1/16" in length for 12 full links.

BobG

Pete, I had to electrify my bike 6 years ago, thus I use the small cogs more and wear them out fast. Most recently I replaced just the 11 and 13 tooth sprockets available without replacing the entire cassette. Yes, the larger cogs and cassette mechanism seem to last forever.

Reddleman

Apples and oranges there. If you’re looking at a basic Shimano Alivio 9 speed block a reasonable comparison in quality would be say Sunrace, whose 11 and 12 speed wide range blocks go for about $45 to $90 when shopping about online. So while more than the 11-32T 9 speed block, still much less than the gold plated self installing SRAM block you’ve shown. Choose an appropriate chain ring and avoid constant use of the 11T on the block and its lifespan will be extended.

Personally speaking, I find a wide range 9 speed block (11-46T) enough for some fairly long day rides and the odd weekend away cycle camping. The cost of parts also makes it an affordable arrangement. I’ve also had enough trouble in the past keeping a 3x7 setup with a low level Shimano groupset going as an urban runabout hauling heavy loads. So in the end it’s a trade off between graduations and simplicity within a similar range, and these days I’ve come to appreciate simplicity after experiencing the limits of supply lines during the pandemic.

That said, I’m pretty sure I have a greater range and, when overlaps considered, the same number of useful gears on my current 1x9 when compared with my Mercian randonneur with 2x6 built up with castoff parts back in the 1990s…

fishboat

And just where do you think experience comes from there sonny..?


Design/build manufacturing companies and their associated Marketing groups exist solely to make and sell product as profitably as possible. Those interests are distinctly different than consumers wanting solid, reliable, long-lasting, fully functional, inexpensive products. It's Marketing's job to convince the masses that previous products are wanting in the face of the new and "improved" widget. The younger people are, the easier they are convinced of..just about anything. Look up Marketing age demographics and where they target their efforts. Add in some peer pressure, a HUGE factor in younger people's lives, and the new trendy stuff flys off the shelf. It's a tried and true process..it makes our world go 'round.

Is some new stuff better?..Sure. Parts of it are actually better, but much of the "new and improved" is Marketing smoke and mirrors more than an actual, mechanical improvement. Change for the sake of change as it provides something to sell at, hopefully, higher a profit margin than mature products...and the world marches on..

elcruxio

Touring (long distances) is still niche. Short trip touring is actually pretty common. There aren't all that many touring specific components and the few offered are flat bar specific. It's no issue to find flat bar triples and shifters but getting them to drop bar requires a cludge. That's not a surprise though because in the EU the vast majority of touring is done with flat or butterfly bars.

A triple is really nice to have when you're just an ordinary person pedaling along with not ultralight gear. You get the really low end for the steep hills and the decently high end for the downhills / tailwinds. A 44/11 at a cadence of 100 will give a maximum speed of around 53,3kph. That'll mean that the spin out point for a not so seasoned cyclists is at around 64kph, which isn't all that fast when we're discussing actual mountains.

Doubles are starting to be fine, but there's the same issue as with proper touring triples: they don't work nicely with drop bars. You'll always need a cludge to make them work with brifters. Bar ends? Yeah nah..
You'd think GRX would have fixed something, but the rear mechs that allow for the 11-42t cassette apparently doesn't work with a double crankset. The rear mechs that do allow for doubles only allow 11-34t cassettes, which is fine but you'll sacrifice a LOT of top end to get even the same low end as with a triple.

With 1X if you want the same low end as with a triple your top end really goes down the drain. You'll be spinning like crazy even with a brisk tailwind not to mention downhills. A 32/10 has gets you around 40kph at a cadence of 100rpm.

Those 1x systems described here and which were so common in the latest tour divide are a decent choice for a trained athelete who uses ultralight gear, packs only the essentials and thus doesn't have nearly as much trouble with the steep hills as someone who... Doesn't do all that.

But I do also believe the 1x is going to be the choice of the future as the future of touring is electric. Ebikes are the obvious choice for a lot of people starting out touring. With an ebike it doesn't really matter all that much what your low or high end look like as you have the motor helping you up the hills and the assist stops at 25kph. The range with dual battery etouring bikes is pretty awesome so you can go for days with short top off charges at restaurants or cafes. I did 160km with one short charge (with a non quick charger) and still had 30km in the tank after I got home. And the bike I rode has 20" very slow tires (schwalbe green guard) and weighed around 50kg with gear and batteries.
Riding ebikes is a different experience so you don't pedal as much on the downhills.

You could always argue that ebikes aren't suitable for expedition style stuff, but even if that were true that sorta stuff is so rare that it doesn't account at all in the grand scheme of things.

elcruxio

I'll chip in on that. Some of the stuff bike companies come up with is definitely not an improvement. The "no cables visible" internal cable routing comes to mind. Absolutely no real world aero benefits, only 100 % aesthetics and turns lowering or raising the stem from a 5 minute job into a whole weekend type of event.

Hookless tubeless rims is another. It was marketed as stronger/lighter carbon rims, but the reality of it was cost of manufacture. Hooked carbon rims are a lot more expensive and complicated to produce that hookless. In the end the hookless system isn't safe to use (with tubeless or tubed), it limits pressures (by a lot) and you're required to cross check from various charts whether your rim and tire combination is in fact compatible. And even if they are compatible, your tire might still blow off the rim.
There wasn't any of those issues with hooked rims. Set and forget as they say.

Proprietary seatposts...

Need I say BB30?

staehpj1

To be fair my really high mileage cassettes are on bikes from my high mileage younger racing years when the little cog was a 14. Also I'd imagine that electrifying puts you on the smaller cog a lot more.

These days I am unlikely to ever rack up 100K on any bike again. I doubt I have 100K left in me at 72, let alone putting that on one bike. That said if I did, I'd imagine that touring with 1X I'd be using the little cogs in low torque situations... flat ground, downhill, tailwinds, etc. Also I can afford to treat myself to new bikes more often now. Back in the day, I might be more likely to be riding tempo for my companions to draft, but not as much any more. I can still hammer a bit on the rolling stuff on a good day, but am likely to be down a cog or two on the cluster most of the time.

Yan 

That's quoting a higher end cassette here. SRAM also sells the lower end PG-1230 and budget PG-1210 cassettes for those who prefer to spend less. These have the additional benefit of using the old regular Shimano HG cassette body, so they'll work on any wheel you already have. They do weigh a bit more.

Is 1x trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist? Maybe. The benefits are no more having to do double shifts, no dropped chains, and maintenance simplicity. Admittedly these are pretty marginal benefits. Then on the flip side, the criticisms are the lack of overall range and larger gaps between gears.

In my opinion neither of these criticisms are applicable to touring bikes. Set your chainring size so your minimum speed is 4 mph. Below that you can't balance anyway. You have the same low gear as any traditional 3x bike. Now your top gear is limited to 20 mph. 4-20 mph, you have 12 gears within an operating speed range of 16 mph. You almost have one gear for each 1 mph. How much more granularity do you need? Let's be serious.

Now someone says 20 mph is too slow a gear for them. You're on a touring bike. Your panniers are sails. 20 mph is a century in 5 hours, a proud feat even for someone on an aero road bike. You're not doing 20 mph on your touring bike, sorry, no offense. If you are doing 20 mph, it means you have some outside aid like a down hill or a tail wind. If you have an outside aid that is already giving you freaking 20 mph, how much faster do you need to go? You're already at the speed where you do a century in 5 hours. Holy sh*t how many miles do you want to tour in a day???? Just rest your legs and chill.

Tourist in MSN

I am amazed that you have over 100 thousand miles on a cassette. From most people I would say that is a crock but I know that you have a lot of experience biking, I trust you at your word. (Usually on this forum if someone is blatantly lying, I just stay silent, a little courtesy is best sometimes.)

Derailleur chains, I change at 0.75 percent. Right now, both my rando bike and light touring bike are between 0.5 and 0.75 percent, so on the verge of needing two new chains. And I have spares on the shelf ready.

I think I get maybe three chains per cassette. And cassettes, I mostly wear out the middle two sprockets first, but with the low cost cassettes that I buy, they do not sell individual sprockets. So, when those two sprockets are shot, the whole cassette gets replaced.

My Rohloff bike, the sprocket teeth and chains wear together, I go over a percent on those chains.

Some people keep records of miles per chain or miles per cassette, I do not keep track of my miles well enough to even know how many miles on each bike I ride each year, how many on any individual component is more work than I want to do. I have been regularly riding five bikes this year.

Tourist in MSN

A neighbor is a bike mechanic at a large shop on the edge of a large university campus. He has said that every e-bike that comes in for work, it is always in the highest gear. Apparently people that ride the e-bikes that he sees just set them for max electric propulsion, when they are accelerating or going uphill they just push the pedals slightly harder. That shop does not work on the cheapest e-bikes, I think they only work on ones where you have to pedal.

Yes, I know you were talking to Pete, but I chose to interrupt.

BobG

Fortunately the small Shimano/Sram cogs are easy to replace without the service of a shop. The outer two fall off with removal of the lockring on many of their cassettes. And they're cheap, just $5-$10 online!

Tourist in MSN

In post 52 above, I specifically cited a Sram 10-52 cassette because that has a 520 percent gear range. I suspect that is why that was a common drive train in the Trail Divide race. I picked that because my derailleur touring bikes have a range of 558 percent, my Rohloff touring bike has a range of 526. The 520 range cassette was the closest 1X system when comparing against other drive trains by gear range.

You cited 11-50 cassettes, that has a 454 percent gear range. Compared to a road bike, it is pretty wide, but it still is much narrower than most touring bikes that are not a 1X system.

If I was comparing a 1X against other drive trains based on number of gears instead of total gear range, the Campy Ekar wins at 13 speeds, but that has a gear range of 440 or 467 percent, depending on cassette chosen, thus a pretty narrow range in comparison. And, that certainly is not a bargain system. So, I did not make that comparison.

I just did a word search in this thread for "20 mph" as I was curious whom you were citing, and nobody else cited 20 mph. Did a search for "20 ", there were a few references to 20 gear inches.

Tourist in MSN

I have always used Sram cassettes. I did not know you could source individual Shimano sprockets.

I have been experimenting by inserting some Miche 8 speed Shimano type sprockets in between Sram sprockets to replace the worn out Sram sprockets. Shifting from the Sram to the Miche or the other way around is not very smooth. I have bought some spacers of different thicknesses to see if that resolves it, but have been a bit busy lately, have not gotten around to trying the other spacers yet.

I had trouble finding Miche sprockets in stock during much of the pandemic, they are in stock again here:
https://www.tradeinn.com/bikeinn/en/...no/136062315/p

The 14T is at a different page.
https://www.tradeinn.com/bikeinn/en/...no/136836997/p

I have no idea if they would work when mixed with Shimano sprockets, I have only used Sram cassettes.

If you order from BikeInn, their shipping is much slower than they claim. Expect a long wait. I have ordered from them several times, they are never early.

The cassettes I buy are so cheap, that is not why I have been doing this experiment, it was more a curiosity on my part to see how it would work.

Yan 

Sorry, I should have phrased it differently. I wasn't quoting anyone in particular. Just a general statement of a widely held sentiment in this thread. The 20 mph is what you get when you have a 30t chainring and 11t cog, leg spinning at 90 rpm. Between 30 and 34t is what I would recommend for a chainring on a 1x touring setup. 34t if you want a bit more speed. I'd personally go 32t next time.

As for the 10-52 vs 11-50 on the cassette. The 520% vs 454% difference is a bit misleading. It seems like a big difference, but on the low end, a 50t vs 52t cog is only a 4% difference. We are talking about the difference between 3.85 mph and 4 mph at the low end. You'd never notice.

Then on the high end, between the 10t vs 11t you're gaining 10% extra speed. Yes, that's pretty significant. Now instead of 20 mph, you could go up to 22 mph. But as I said before, do you really need to pedal up to 22 mph when you're already doing 20 mph on a touring bike? 20mph is already quite fast. Beyond that I'd really rather just chill and enjoy the downhill. And if you are really feeling bad about that 10% loss, you could take off that 30t chainring and put on a 34t. Boom, that's 13% faster right there. A 34t front 50t rear combo is 18.5 gear inches, still ok for loaded touring. Now if you go all out and get the expensive cassette with a 10t cog and combine that with a 34t chainring, you'd be doing 25 mph at 90 leg rpm. Personally I think that's a fantasy speed on a touring bike.

Why? Because pedalling to go very fast on a downhill is simply not a thing in touring. 99% of hills are either on or off. One moment you are pedalling to the top of a rise, the next moment you're hanging on for dear life above 35 mph hoping there won't be a sudden gust of cross wind to mess with you. You bomb to the bottom do the hill and then you are climbing again.

How often do you actually get that very long, perfectly consistent, endless 3% downhill where you can actually pedal downhill at 25 mph for ten, twenty minutes? Very rare. Maybe if you only ride rail trails.

Trakhak

Whenever I read the arguments in favor of 1x for touring bikes, I feel like Jerry in this conversation:

Tourist in MSN

Yeah, I can count maybe five or six times that I can cite, three of those I can name right now, the others I can say which trip they were on but not the specific hills.

But even in hilly terrain where you are going down a hill for a half mile and up the other side of the valley, I like to maintain some momentum when it flattens out and then when I start up the other side of the valley. My 11 and 12T sprockets are only used on those downhills but I often use those gears for those short downhills too. If you prefer to coast, nothing wrong with that.

I almost never have a cadence over 78, 72 is much more common, and that is the kind of gearing I want to have.

Atlas Shrugged

How much momentum are you really able to maintain with a fully loaded touring rig pannier’s and all.

elcruxio

Well, you made me consider on cutting the high end a little and lo and behold, there are 9-speed 12-36 cassettes which pretty much sort out any gearing jump issues and give a far tighter gearing than even a 12-speed 11-50. However the 12-36 combined with a 22-32-44 triple gives a range of 600% and a spin out speed of around 60kph. Nifty.

Now I'm willing to admit that I'm a cyclist first and a tourist second but the two are pretty close. Therefore I like speed. However since I'm always touring with the partner et al, I can't cut back on gear. So I need to take my speed doses where I can get them, ie. tailwinds and downhills. Being limited to only 20mph would be a major bummer. I've spun out a 44/11 and regularly hit 60kph on downhills. Coasting downhills just isn't a thing I do. You can always be faster.

That being said even with six bags 20mph isn't all that fast. Doesn't take much of a tailwind or downhill to get past 20mph, which is exactly what I experienced when I tried 1x touring. On the tour after that I had a situation where I did average around 20mph for about an hour when I was chasing after my partner. Had I had to crank out at that speed with a 1x on the smallest cog for an hour? well it would have sucked. Double friction losses from the cross chain and riding on the smallest cog. With a triple I typically stay pretty close to a straight chainline when going at a steady pace.

As to ease of maintenance, I never did clean the cassette or chainrings on tour. Perhaps I should have since shifting on sticky cogs or chainrings isn't great. Luckily that's a thing of the past with modern chain waxes which don't leave things sticky. Perfect shifting and no maintenance needs of any kind for cogs or chainrings. Therefore maintenance wise with wax it doesn't matter whether you have a 1x or 3x.