Is Shimano cycling division permafucked?

[Whiteroom_Guardian]

XT 12spd chain + cassette shifts the best and it's not even close. As said above though the XT rear mech is the most fragile little baby ever. Probably works fantastic if you live somewhere with perfectly groomed mellow singletrack and you ride 6x a summer. If a rock even gets close to the mech it twists itself up and will never shift right again. Enduro race use? Good luck. They last a week at best.

Now AXS mech + XT cassette/chain = the jam.

[stuckathuntermtn]

I guess I'm not hard core enough. My buddy broke one, but he fell on a pile of rocks, so I think that had more to do with it.

[XXX-er]

and how fast was he going ^^ it would be interesting to do destructive testing by putting ders in a vise and measuring the force used before they break


going backwards 20yrs I've been on sram/ sram/ shimano/ sram and none of them broke ,


I had a Hanger-Banger on that oldest sram X9 and I'm sure it helped on at least one occasion https://www.giantancaster.ca/product...anger-3138.htm

[Marshal Olson]

Just throwing a contrasting data point out there. Close to a million vert on a couple 12spd m9100/m8100 rear derailleurs in a very rocky place with no issues at all. they all shifted at least as well as transmission, cost half as much, and weigh half as much. no thanks on any of this new electric garbage or anything without a properly functioning clutch (includes eagle, axs, and apparently this new Shimano stuff!)

sorry for the hot take!

[ticketchecker]

M8100 rear derailleur, chain, cassette + m9100 shifter is my go to


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[XXX-er]

"" Just throwing a contrasting data point out there ""


Marshal Olson you must get all these same people complaining about how easy your skis get coreshots ?

[Tailwind]

I dont think anyone has said 8100 is bad. Just that the cage is soft. It is stamped metal easy to slightly bend it so it is 100 percent rideable but just shifts poorly. Impact to the RD body is fine - cage is not. Bought the new 9-45 cassette yesterday using a 20 percent off coupon. Debating between a medium cage 9100 vs the new electronic version. I think I can get 15 percent off the upgrade kit so it is about 500 more for the electronic stuff. Leaning toward mechanical. I will need cranks as well so I am thinking of getting Race Face Eras. Going on the XC bike that gets most of my annual miles.

[toast2266]

Part of the problem is that shimano is kinda missing a groupset. XT is the rough equivalent of sram GX in terms of quality (or at least durability), weight, and price.

But XTR is closer to Sram XX1 by those same metrics. So shimano is kinda missing that X0 level groupset. Higher quality and more durable than XT / GX, but doesn't go down all the expensive rabbit holes to save weight and be blingy like XTR and XX1.

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[Marshal Olson]

Thats a really good point Toast! Hadnt really thought about it that way, but totally makes sense. Especially with SLX and XT being essentially the same thing with only very minor differences now too.,

[One (+) Sentence]

Thats a really good point Toast! Hadnt really thought about it that way, but totally makes sense. Especially with SLX and XT being essentially the same thing with only very minor differences now too.,

Ive always looked at it like
GX = XT
XO = XTR Trail
XX = XTR Race

[jm2e]

I think all the drama talk would benefit from some acknowledgement that drivetrains work pretty damn great these days.
Take it from someone who pays for mid grade shit, breaks it, then tries some different mid grade shit. It all works fabulously compared to what we grew up with. I’m sure there’s stuff that works better than what I got, but I’m also sure it starts getting janky when neglected, as my stuff does.
Buy what you can afford, keep it tuned as much as you can stomach, and be a giant dick about it.


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[stuckathuntermtn]

Except X0 had and XX has a lot more carbon than XTR, the billet cassettes, etc. Kinda lame that X0 Transmission doesn't come with a carbon crank. Stupid thing they have instead looks like someone made a bottle opener that doesn't work.
Oddly, I have an X0 carbon crank and XT everything else. That's just how it came. Smmokan spec'd it, ask him. Put a One Up chainring on it so I can run a Shimano chain and it's great. (Also because I wasn't hot on 175mm cranks and a 30t ring. Too much spinning with long crank arms and low gears that Shimano uses.). Oh yeah, that's another thing. Look at the gearing on Shimano 12 speed cassettes and look at the Sram ones. Shimano progression seems better. I don't have a lot of experience with Sram, but XT has worked well for me. Went to an XT 1x11 on my hardtail when the Deore 11-51t 11 speed cassette came out. The difference from my old SLX 2x10 was stark.
Does anyone make an upgrade for the cage then? Haven't had a problem, but hey, you never know.

[XtrPickels]

Part of the problem is that shimano is kinda missing a groupset. XT is the rough equivalent of sram GX in terms of quality (or at least durability), weight, and price. But XTR is closer to Sram XX1 by those same metrics. So shimano is kinda missing that X0 level groupset. Higher quality and more durable than XT / GX, but doesn't go down all the expensive rabbit holes to save weight and be blingy like XTR and XX1. Sent from my SM-S931U1 using Tapatalk

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Its not that its Missing; its that the gaps arent properly spaced They should push XT up in the range slightly to move it away from Deore / SLX and closer to XTR. From a product line perspective, less is more, especially if you can clearly articulate why each product needs to exist.

Near as I can tell, SRAM has 14? different mtb drivetrain product lines. Thats an nightmare from a tooling / forecasting / inventory management / product line management / etc. perspective

[toast2266]

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Its not that its Missing; its that the gaps arent properly spaced They should push XT up in the range slightly to move it away from Deore / SLX and closer to XTR. From a product line perspective, less is more, especially if you can clearly articulate why each product needs to exist.

Near as I can tell, SRAM has 14? different mtb drivetrain product lines. Thats an nightmare from a tooling / forecasting / inventory management / product line management / etc. perspective

Yeah, that makes sense. XT and SLX seem closer than they should be.

If XT could shed a little bit of weight and get a more durable rear derailleur (cage and clutch improvements), it'd be a fantastic group.

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[Dee Hubbs]

The super muddy World Cup XCO yesterday proved the new XTR is reliable ready. In the women&#39;s race many many riders had mechanicals, and were pouring water bottles on their drivetrain every lap. I don&#39;t want to say it was only SRAM, but I noticed that the majority of teams that were effective were actually SRAM cream.In the World Cup there are 2 tech zones, and a rider can only get service in those zones, so if you flat 20 feet past the tech zone you must continue forward until the next tech zone to get outside help. Water and nutrition is only available in the one tech zone, and the other is strictly for tech and a water bottle hand off is prohibited. \
After a few laps the race officials allowed water bottle hand offs in the second tech zone so that athletes could actively dump water bottles on their drive train to shed some mud. It was a a mess. The majority off mechanicals seemed to be front chainrings packed and dumping the chains off the front.
https://www.instagram.com/uci_mtbwor...o-0RFMzWi/Puck
Pieterse showed her confidence in her new XTR as she crossed the finish line a few minutes a head of her competitors.

[EWG]

In that XCO race our guy Bjorn Reilly is starting to move back up - U23 last year, current open mens US Champion wearing the stars and stripes, moved up to pro open this year. Tough health start to the year but starting to get fit again, up to 25th in the overall this week.

Shout out to Bjorn. Maybe the best bike handler you will ever see. Not human. Hope he starts feeling fully fit and pushing Blevins soon. And how about Blevins setting a record by winning 5 in a row!?

[Canada1]

I buy Shimano. I have a SRAM bike with Shimano Brakes. Maybe I'm living in the past, but their stuff never fails on me.

[grabtindy]

I greatly prefer shimano shifting and brakes to sram as well, that's why their product management is so frustrating. Can't wait for wireless road shifters to get released so I can get a 9-45 mullet setup on my gravel bike.

[jamal]

I definitely don't want a 9t cog on the cassette. That's going to wear out so fast if you ever actually use it plus the chainline and efficiency are pretty bad way out there on such a small cog. I thought everyone learned the "don't have a 9t" lesson with those e13 or whatever they were cassettes.

With 10-44 sram I had to swap to a larger chainring just to spend less time in the smallest cogs because they wore out so quickly the first time around.

Anyway, I guess it's nice shimano finally has a wireless electric derailleur. I'm probably not going to buy one though.

[Dee Hubbs]

grabtind: The XTR rear derailleur works with all the 12s Di2 wireless road/gravel shifter. DuraAce, Ultegra, 105, GRX.
Mullet away!

[Whiteroom_Guardian]

I'll add that I really wanted full XT to work and was anti wireless for quite a while, but I just kept replacing XT and constantly chasing my tail. Shifts amazing for like a week or 10 days and then slowly shit the bed. Is it the hangar? Let's replace......shifting still blows. Check all screw settings....yep still blows. Etc etc. I often found that unless I had the absolute perfect cable glide the shifting started to suck balls. Maybe my previous frames just had too many twists and turns?

IDK.

[toast2266]

I'll add that I really wanted full XT to work and was anti wireless for quite a while, but I just kept replacing XT and constantly chasing my tail. Shifts amazing for like a week or 10 days and then slowly shit the bed. Is it the hangar? Let's replace......shifting still blows. Check all screw settings....yep still blows. Etc etc. I often found that unless I had the absolute perfect cable glide the shifting started to suck balls. Maybe my previous frames just had too many twists and turns?

IDK.

That was more or less my experience as well. I think a large part of it is the clutch. Over a couple of XT derailleurs, once they started to go downhill, they all shifted considerably better with the clutch turned off.

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[jm2e]

Honestly, the thing I find that most separates the brands for me, is the ability to prop open the RD when removing a wheel on a SRAM bike.

[Dantheman]

Honestly, the thing I find that most separates the brands for me, is the ability to prop open the RD when removing a wheel on a SRAM bike.

I do like the SRAM pin system a lot better than Shim's on/off switch.

[Canada1]

I had one of those spider XTR rear derailers in the 90's that had a carbon fiber outside cage. Wore through two of those, and it is the only Shimano item that had a real design issue. I am not a fan of anything NX or below on SRAM. And I still hold a grudge over two bikes spece'd with their POS dropper system. All of that said, everything is better than the XTR was in the 80's, and it was the best back then. The modern drive train pretty much rocks. You can generally count your dropped chains on a per season rather than a per ride ratio.