1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Mike Ayling
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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Mike Ayling » Thu Jun 21, 2018 12:36 pm

RonK wrote:
Mike Ayling wrote:On CycleBlaze at the moment there are a number of journals from old timers who are riding e-bikes.
Gunton at Crazyguy still won't have a bar of e-bike journals on his main site and has a subsidiary ghetto area for such journals but the numbers are increasing.
CycleBlaze only exists because Gunton pissed off some of his main contributors.
I would hardly classify myself as a major contributor but I have also moved across.

BTW I saw one of your journals there, Ron.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby RonK » Thu Jun 21, 2018 3:27 pm

Mike Ayling wrote:
RonK wrote:
Mike Ayling wrote:On CycleBlaze at the moment there are a number of journals from old timers who are riding e-bikes.
Gunton at Crazyguy still won't have a bar of e-bike journals on his main site and has a subsidiary ghetto area for such journals but the numbers are increasing.
CycleBlaze only exists because Gunton pissed off some of his main contributors.
I would hardly classify myself as a major contributor but I have also moved across.

BTW I saw one of your journals there, Ron.
People like Jeff and Kristen Arnim, Karen Cook, Leo Woodland were all once prolific contributors to CGOAB.

I have read yours Mike. I have all of mine over there now too. I deleted them for CGOAB several years ago when Gunton got nasty.
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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby kenwstr » Tue Jun 26, 2018 8:15 pm

When I 1st got my current roadie, the chain dropped quite often, even after a service. Eventually I realised the front mech wasn't adjusted right so I had a go myself and found it impossible to adjust correctly. Exasperated, I took the chain off and disconnected the cable. Then loosened the clamp, trimmed the clamp up square on the down tube and adjusted it's position to gain the manufacturers stated clearances and alignment with the chain rings. Tightened up the clap, rechecked clearance and alignment. Installed chain, adjusted stops to correct clearances, installed and adjusted cable. Chain has not dropped in the 2 or 3 years since. Think there's something in that maybe........
Ken

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby stevenaaus » Sat Jun 01, 2019 5:32 pm

warthog1 wrote:I still fail to see the point.
I am an ageing never was.
11s 32-11 on the back and mid-compact 52-36 on the front.
Put it in the small ring for long climbs otherwise leave it in the big ring.
Why pay more money to have bigger gaps :?
Just back from a Great NZ holiday where i'd hired a few decent bikes. I took a 1x hard-tail with something like 32t x 11-42t for 70kms of decent unsealed bikeway trails, and i was really suprised how rubbish i found it. I mean, the bike should have been in its element, but the top speed was very poor for anything flat, though bottom gear was almost good enough to get up steep climbs.

But the beef i have is - coming over a hill or a dip, 1x is just a PITA. With a normal MTB, just click the front shifter, 1 maybe 2 cogs and you're all good, but a 1x means doing a speed dial on the only shifter as you go for 4 ,5 or more cog changes... everytime. Geez i was disappointed. Seems to me like another nasty case of style over substance, or an industry change-the-flavour-of-the-month-and-rake-it-in-while-its-good, ala MTB wheel sizes.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby antigee » Sat Jun 01, 2019 7:49 pm

stevenaaus wrote: But the beef i have is - coming over a hill or a dip, 1x is just a PITA. With a normal MTB, just click the front shifter, 1 maybe 2 cogs and you're all good, but a 1x means doing a speed dial on the only shifter as you go for 4 ,5 or more cog changes... everytime. Geez i was disappointed. Seems to me like another nasty case of style over substance, or an industry change-the-flavour-of-the-month-and-rake-it-in-while-its-good, ala MTB wheel sizes.
I'm still not a convert to 1x (I do have a 1x shopper/gym bike that replaced an SS due to a hill I failed to cope with) but times continue to change and I'm pretty sure at some point as triples are only available from secret backstreet machine shops and it will make going electronic cheaper I'll end up there.....anyway today(ish) Shimano announced 12 speed SLX and XT with 1x options....as to gear changes here's an (edited) quote from CyclingTips:

The XT right-hand shifter offers “Instant Release” for immediate shifting response at the derailleur, a multi-release for dumping down cassette gears.... By comparison, the cheaper SLX M7100 version ... can also only shift three gears (up the cassette) in a single lever press, whereas XT can do four.

of course a downtube shifter could move the whole cassette!

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby stevenaaus » Sat Jun 01, 2019 9:42 pm

Haha - go back to downtubes.

Yeah, the problem on my hire bike was worsened i think , by
- I could only get 2 downshifts at a time for some reason, where normally you'd expect 3
- and chain tension wasn't good on top gear (11t), to the point it affected gear shifts
May these two things wouldn't be such on issue on a well-tuned bike

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Duck! » Sun Jun 02, 2019 1:26 am

1x in modern drivetrains originated entirely because a certain American components company could never build a decent front shifting system, so they invested in marketing instead of engineering.....

It's passable if your riding doesn't require a huge gear range, but start mixing up the terrain its compromises become very apparent. If you want a big gear range, you'll end up with big jumps between ratios. More sprockets help close the gaps, but upgrading to suit brings considerable expense, and still doesn't address every problem.

You can change chainrings to suit different overall profiles, but then you have the problem that picking a smaller ring to shift the focus to climbing comes at the expense of top-end for the descents that follow, or going a bit bigger on the chainring to help the top end a bit will mean the climbs hurt more. Or you can pick something in the middle that will hurt both top and bottom end gears....

On a different note, number of shifts you can do in a single sweep of the lever has nothing to do with 1x or more-x; it's entirely to do with the respective manufacturers' spec of the shifters - they don't all subscribe to the concept of more is better!
I had a thought, but it got run over as it crossed my mind.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby foo on patrol » Sun Jun 02, 2019 10:34 am

And this is why I prefer twin rings on the front. :wink:

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby march83 » Sun Jun 02, 2019 3:42 pm

Duck! wrote: It's passable if your riding doesn't require a huge gear range, but start mixing up the terrain its compromises become very apparent. If you want a big gear range, you'll end up with big jumps between ratios. More sprockets help close the gaps, but upgrading to suit brings considerable expense, and still doesn't address every problem.

You can change chainrings to suit different overall profiles, but then you have the problem that picking a smaller ring to shift the focus to climbing comes at the expense of top-end for the descents that follow, or going a bit bigger on the chainring to help the top end a bit will mean the climbs hurt more. Or you can pick something in the middle that will hurt both top and bottom end gears....
I feel like I've done this before, but anyway... I've got well over 20,000km on my 1x road setup now so I think I'm in a pretty good place to talk about it. These are fair points, but I think people overestimate how much impact they actually have in the real world. I think the takeaway is that it's just not that different, you get used to it like anything else, but that there's not much point getting used to it unless it offers you some actual advantages (which for most people it doesn't).

Range? 52t + 11-42 gives better range than 52/36 + 11-28. Based on how many compact cranks I see about lots of people are surviving with 50x11 or 50x12 as their lowest so for most I don't see how it would be a problem

Spread? Comparing the common 11-28 and the 11-42 we have:
11-13-15-17-19-21-24-28-32-37-42
11-12-13-14-15-17-19-21-23-25-28

This is the big compromise on paper I think. The most significant hole I used to notice was the 12t when I only had a 50t ring, but after a few hundred kilometres I was over it. My legs just got used to it. I think if you were doing a lot of climbing, like regularly doing 30min+ climbs, you'd notice the 5t jumps in an 11-42 right at the top but the worst of my commute is about 10 minutes at 5% with a short pinch at 8% so I don't get bothered by it. Outside of that, it's just something you get used to and it's imperceptible after a while.

In terms of real world utility, there's just not a lot lost most of the time, but there's nothing really gained either. You have the spread of a regular drivetrain, you just have bigger holes that you've stopped noticing because you're used to it so in the end it's a wash.

These are very minor pluses: When I do maintenance I only have 1 gear cable to replace. I have 1 less cable around my front bars. I don't have to tune a front derr or worry about it rubbing or anything. Shifting up and down 1 cassette and not thinking about cross-chaining is nice for me. For a bike that cops ~450km a week in all weather these are all solid pluses - a few things less to worry about wearing out or breaking and having to fix on the side of the road, or on a weeknight when I'm tired. In terms of weight, nothing is saved - lose a gear cable, lose a ring, lose a derailleur... add a bigger cassette and a larger derailleur and 1x11 is almost certainly heavier.

The only 1x drawback I can come up with is the chainline in the lowest gear. The rear derr makes a bit more noise in 52-42, but that's about it, and TBH you don't spend that my time in a bail out gear unless it's proper steep. It's not draggy in the 52-42, I still get 2000-2500km per chain, exactly like my other bikes so it's not adding to wear. I haven't broken a chain yet so AFAIK it's not weakening them.

Would I take it racing? For crits, yes. My regular crit bike has a 52t front ring with 11-25 out the back and i spend almost all my races somewhere between the 12 and the 17 so range isn't an issue and I can deal with the gaps. For a roadrace with actual hills, no because gaps will be super annoying if you're on the redline climbing for instance...

Probably the only other time I wouldn't want it is on a proper hilly ride, like the alpine classic or similiar. 5t jumps would certainly get irritating if you're climbing for an hour and you can't find rhythm with the gears that you've got.

So where do they sit in the real world? If you've got 2x11 there's almost no case for going 1x because the pros/cons are a wash. In my case, i did it as a new build from scratch knowing full well that I never used my small ring on the route I was going to ride daily with this bike. Maybe you'd buy one brand new off the shelf for something different? Honestly, I don't know who they're for, but I know they certainly work in practice a lot better than people think.

FWIW, most of the 1x MTB systems i see are strangely under-geared. If I'm climbing something that's so steep and technical that I need 30x50 then I may as well get off and walk before I fall over sideways, and that's at the expense of utility on the flats. For this reason, of my 2 MTBs, 1 runs a 42t front ring so that I can bomb along firetrails...

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby stevenaaus » Sun Jun 02, 2019 7:03 pm

Duck! wrote:1x in modern drivetrains originated entirely because a certain American components company could never build a decent front shifting system, so they invested in marketing instead of engineering.....
Hmmm - I have an Apex equipped 2x10 roadie with a microshift front mech.
The rear changes are nice, but the front upshift is a little tough for my girlie hands.
I've never tried any other Sram bike, but generally i've been impressed by the odd bits of Sram kit i've seen,
still i have so many Shimano bikes, i think i'll stick with their single tap levers. I often ride hills hard and shimano's short downshifts (and sweeps) beat Sram's double clicks.
It's passable if your riding doesn't require a huge gear range, but start mixing up the terrain its compromises become very apparent. If you want a big gear range, you'll end up with big jumps between ratios. More sprockets help close the gaps, but upgrading to suit brings considerable expense, and still doesn't address every problem.

You can change chainrings to suit different overall profiles, but then you have the problem that picking a smaller ring to shift the focus to climbing comes at the expense of top-end for the descents that follow, or going a bit bigger on the chainring to help the top end a bit will mean the climbs hurt more. Or you can pick something in the middle that will hurt both top and bottom end gears....
Yeah, I've never really worried about gear "gaps", but they were obvious on this MTB

On a different note, number of shifts you can do in a single sweep of the lever has nothing to do with 1x or more-x; it's entirely to do with the respective manufacturers' spec of the shifters - they don't all subscribe to the concept of more is better!
I expected SLX to have a three sweep, but maybe the shifters were a little budget... can't remember.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Duck! » Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:35 pm

stevenaaus wrote:
Duck! wrote: On a different note, number of shifts you can do in a single sweep of the lever has nothing to do with 1x or more-x; it's entirely to do with the respective manufacturers' spec of the shifters - they don't all subscribe to the concept of more is better!
I expected SLX to have a three sweep, but maybe the shifters were a little budget... can't remember.
Shifter action is the only functional difference between SLX and XT, with XT being a considerable jump better.
I had a thought, but it got run over as it crossed my mind.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby trailgumby » Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:51 pm

Duck! wrote:1x in modern drivetrains originated entirely because a certain American components company could never build a decent front shifting system, so they invested in marketing instead of engineering.....
You're wrong.

It's not past tense.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Duck! » Sun Jun 02, 2019 9:01 pm

The trend may be ongoing, but it had to start somewhere. Past tense is still valid when noting its origin.
I had a thought, but it got run over as it crossed my mind.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby mikesbytes » Sun Jun 02, 2019 9:10 pm

I suppose that the gaps in the gear range are an issue or not an issue depending on how cadence sensitive you. If you find you deliver your power of a small range of cadence then keep with 2/3 chain rings but if you deliver your power over a large range of cadence then you have options.

How much weight is saved by not having 2 chain rings?

How much aero is gained by not having 2 chain rings but having a large cluster?
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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby NASHIE » Sun Jun 02, 2019 10:07 pm

mikesbytes wrote:
How much weight is saved by not having 2 chain rings?

How much aero is gained by not having 2 chain rings but having a large cluster?
Not sure if thats the marketing in road 1x, but for cyclocross and i guess MTB where gaps are not as noticable the benefit of 1x is less risk of chain drop and miss shifts under race conditions. Overall speeds are lower and missed shifts with so many corners can make or break your race.
Did my first road race for many years last week, and rode a 1x 42, 11-26. It was only c grade and a flat 55k at 38 average and was not an issue. I feel a similar race with a 44 would give enough confidence to go off the front, but any hilly coarse would require a 11-32 which i could not live with the gaps, and decent downhills you would be of the back.
Note many U17 with 7m rollouts which are about a 42x13 win B grade road and criterium sprints so gearing is not an issue if your trained to spin.
1x for well setup off road bike are a win, but for road are a real compromise. The only winner will be the manufacturer selling a 1x for the same price as 2x $$$$
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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby MattyK » Sun Jun 02, 2019 10:35 pm

march83 wrote:...I think if you were doing a lot of climbing, like regularly doing 30min+ climbs, you'd notice the 5t jumps in an 11-42
42/37 = 13% jump in ratio. Smaller than 13/11. Or 15/13. On par with 17/15.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Duck! » Sun Jun 02, 2019 11:25 pm

mikesbytes wrote: How much aero is gained by not having 2 chain rings but having a large cluster?
Aero is probably worse, because you need a larger derailleur to be able to swing low enough to fit under the bigger sprockets. Given the general interruption to airflow around the crank area caused by the rider's legs & feet there's probably not much to be gained by losing the front derailleur.
I had a thought, but it got run over as it crossed my mind.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Bentnose » Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:13 pm

At the start of this year I went from 3x9 to 1x11 and thought I’d hate it instead I really love it, you think less about your gearing and i’ve had my best MTB race season in years, I won my first 2 races on it. The one thing I have found is it makes my MTB useless for general riding, the gearing is too low, 32T chainring with 11-46 cassette, if I go on the road or even a good fast bike path i’ll bairly be pedalling in the biggest gear and going slower than I should be, quite often.

Is a 1x road bike similar in that it restricts its use to very specific riding and situations? I think for general riding it would be too restrictive, I’d rather just have all the gears I need for all the situations I may encounter. MTB is a bit different because there is more coasting due to the variability of the terrain.
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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Usernoname » Tue Jun 04, 2019 7:40 am

Loving my 1 x 11 MTB as well (and won't touch 1x12). I have 1 x 9 'pub' bike which is OK on mostly flat recreational cycling. 2 x 10 gravel and 2 x 11 road. I have no desire to go 1x on them and will avoid that on any upgrade.
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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby DarrylH » Tue Jun 04, 2019 11:56 am

I know why MTBs went 1X - the makers want us all to go to electronic shifting. After many years of shifting to massive sprockets with just the thumb many riders will end up like me - suffering from MTB Thumb Syndrome. Then the only alternative is to go DI2 as that is the only shifter made by anyone which can be used with the left hand. Mine thumb also got much worse when I went to 10 sp clutched, so perhaps that was part of the plan. I thought the whole 1X thing had failed when I started seeing ads for Quick-change chainrings.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby familyguy » Tue Jun 04, 2019 12:32 pm

Having spent much of the last 3 weekend rides I've done predominantly in the small ring, I'm coming around to 1x roadies. Horses for courses...1x10 for the road gives me enough for almost everything I need to do. If I was running maybe a 42 front and 12-28 rear I'd get most places without too big a gap between gears.

I think the issue is that they're trying to make 1x10/11 do everything. Climb 12% gravel grades as well as maintain a not-too-fast cadence for 30km/h on the flat? Of course you're going to end up with a wide range, and therefore big steps between. I thought much of the reason we went away from 5 and 6-speed rear was to get smaller steps?!

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby Calvin27 » Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:13 pm

DarrylH wrote:I know why MTBs went 1X - the makers want us all to go to electronic shifting.
1 for mtb makes a lot of sense. Clears up the BB area for suspension and you don't really need tight gear spacing as much as you need range. Before 1x, people were successfully running 1x9 hack jobs that worked really well. It was very much consumer driven and you can see this from the small guys selling stuff before the two big 'S' even started looking at 1x.
familyguy wrote:I think the issue is that they're trying to make 1x10/11 do everything. Climb 12% gravel grades as well as maintain a not-too-fast cadence for 30km/h on the flat?
A compact double does that well for my road bike. I think for a road bike, 1x can work but yeah you're right it can't do everything. The speed range is too great and gear spacing is important - which is both not so much of a factor in mtb.
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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby find_bruce » Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:14 pm

As far as I can tell the only two selling points for 1x roadies are (1) avoiding the triple shuffle when changing the front ring & (2) simplifying things for people who struggle to know which gear to change into next.

It comes at a significant compromise being the big steps, neither of which seem worth it to me. Anyone seen stats on how many are being sold ? Anecdotally at least there doesn't seem to be a big take up.

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby cyclingnolycra » Thu Jun 06, 2019 1:16 pm

I'd love to try it but any decent 1x roadie is quite expensive, which seems ridiculous. Is the best way to buy a 1x gravel and change tyres? 1x road groupsets are also expensive.

I find it annoying that I can't set up my front derailleur perfectly. My barrel adjuster has stopped working... so to me that's the biggest appeal of 1x

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Re: 1x for Road Bikes - is it real?

Postby warthog1 » Thu Jun 06, 2019 1:21 pm

find_bruce wrote:
It comes at a significant compromise being the big steps, neither of which seem worth it to me. Anyone seen stats on how many are being sold ? Anecdotally at least there doesn't seem to be a big take up.
Well articulated. That is how I see it too. Gaps so big you could fall into them and break your neck :wink:
I have seen one where I live.
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