With all the Covid-induced supply chain fears and realities – I thought I’d give a non-Shimano cassette a try during a drivetrain swap-out.
I’m religious about certain gear choices, and like all aging codgers, swear by certain items. It would take a lot of evidence to pry me away from a chain other than the KMC X11 (SL), but I figured a cassette would either work, or suck, right out of the gate. While a catastrophic failure is possible, problems would likely come from bending or shifting issues over time – which would obviously suck as well.
UPDATE OCTOBER 2022:
Well, it finally happened, I sheared off a piece of 2nd gear during a tech climb at Bruce and Toms exactly one year from the date ordered last year. Frankly, given the miles and the terrain ridden over the last year, this isn’t a total condemnation of the part. I got away clean from the failure, but if it were on one of the pucker spine climbs – things could have gotten nasty.
BOTTOM LINE:
For the short money and access to a 50-tooth big sprocket (which is hard to get on an 11 speed these days), this still feels like a good decision. That being said, didn’t replace it with the same, I’m going with a SunRace MX8 Cassette with a 46t large.
Choosing
I wanted to bump up the tooth count from my Shimano 11-46 to 11-50. With aging knees, a little less knee grind from time to time is a good thing (according to an old orthopedist) and when you ride the rocks around here – it’s grind central! We’ll leave out the fact that the only way to consistently clean these rocks is with more mo and higher gears, but that’s another story.
After some digging, I found this cassette fit/compatibility chart in a forum. ZTTO seems to be another Chinese/Taiwanese supplier of off-brand components.
After a modest search I chose: The Bi-bike 11 speed 11/50T from Amazon
This one seemed to have good reviews. If the $60 investment pans out – I’ll be psyched that we’re not stuck in the duopoly of SRAM/Shimano for ALL things.
It arrived quickly in a padded bag – but no hard backing – which made me a little worried. No obvious bends – but some tweaking WAS necessary.
How to:
- Install new cassette onto the wheel (requires cassette remove tool).
- Installed a new long cage derailleur.
- Noticed a slight bend in the biggest ring of the new cassette – used a brake rotor tool to correct the slight deviation. I think this was slight damage in shipping.
- Further adjustments for optimal shifting up/down.
Anecdotes from the install:
Bought a new oval chainring – Blackspire Direct Mount and realized I BOUGHT THE WRONG DIRECT MOUNT style oval chainring. Needed Race-Face compatible – bought Shimano. Curse these new crank standards!
Update 11/22/21
I’m pleased to report that this off-brand Cassette is holding up well in some pretty extreme conditions. Shifting is clean, crisp – some problems getting into the 11th (little) gear. The climbs around here are such that you use your 4 lowest gears under max torque on every ride. I haven’t had grinding or skipping and I’ve tweaked the barrels to the point where I’m pretty confident it’s to spec.
I’ll report back.
Update 05/01/22
No bends, reasonably precise shifting still. Starting to old-man clean things using the 50 tooth gear. Nice to have it!
