zenitb wrote: ↑18 Mar 2023, 11:17pm
Very interesting ... somehow this fact escaped all the excited commentary from the cycling press...
I suppose the point is that this was launched as 'durable, but heavy, for ebikes' 2 years ago
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/shimano-i ... train.html, and now they are saying 'durable for everyone', and downplaying the 'heavy' part.
IMO it's not such a big difference in that even if the cassette wears out less frequently, I'm not sure if you change your chain frequently that cassettes wear out particularly frequently in the first place, and the bike still needs maintenance of everything else at the same frequency.
They haven't given any weights for the cranksets, I assume they are the same as the old Deore/XT stuff in that respect.
Also this is a 'leisure' product, so they don't want to get rid of the existing mess/line-up that I can necessarily see, in that there will still be a need for a lower-end groupset than this, which starts at '4000' level. There have been any number of past 'leisure' groupsets, but what they are
not doing is replacing their MTB or road line-up with this. It seems that this will eventually be an alternative for people who want to make hybrid drop bar bikes with mtb gearing or whatever.
This is basically a replacement for their 'T' components.
There you had 48-36-26 and 44-32-24 triples, no doubles. The triples were paired with 11-36t cassettes. This gives a ratio of 48/11 or 26/36. A range of 6.
I should draw attention to the Cues sprockets:
11-13-15-17-20-23 is fixed across ALL of the linkglide cassettes
The options are then:
* 23-26-30-36 (2x9)
* 23-26-30-36-43 (2x10)
* 23-26-30-36-43-50 (1x11)
* 23-26-30-34-39 (2x10)
* 23-26-30-34-39-45 (2x11)
* 23-28-34-41 (2x9)
* 23-28-34-41-48 (1x10)
* 23-28-36-46 (1x9)
The double cranksets are:
46/32, 40/26, 36/22 with a 14t gap, which work with any of the 2x setups above
OR
46/30, which is for the 11-36 2x9, the 11-39 2x10, or the 11-41 2x9.
The hollow-armed (lighter) U8000 crankset is only available in 46/32, or 42 or 40t 1x. (I guess because 26/45 and 22/45 they see as unnecessarily law)
It can be seen that this ends up with a range of around 5.8x, which is not too bad. (obviously singles are going to have bad ranges).
It can also be seen that the 46/30x11-41 2x9 gives one of the better gear ranges in the line-up. It's almost certainly lighter than the 11-45t 11-speed cassette. It seems Shimano were lazy in creating the 11-39t 10-speed cassette, and should add an 11-41 10-speed cassette at a later date.....
While the U8000/U8020 rear derailleurs all have clutches, for some reason the U6020 (2x RD) is missing it. This means, for example, that if you want the 11-39t 2x setup, then you won't get a clutched derailleur, you are forced to use the 11-45t 11-speed cassette and its matching derailleur if you want a clutch
Got a closer look at the new kit on a bike and in a glass display case. I understand from a friend that bike shops in the Shimano Service Centres scheme have been made privy to rather more detail about CUES.