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That is one serious spread of gears.
XD Driver?
If not complete idiots.
Lets see if they get the weight and price close to SRAM
It states a new free-hub body design...surprised if it’s cross compatible with SRAM xd drive though.
Cause if you want to get customers back from a competitor making it harder is exactly the right way of doing it, what the world needs is another 10t freehub
FFS, not another hub standard.
Maybe they've gone with the mini driver. It's basically a cut down shimano freehub anyway.
XD is lame, I'd rather Shimano invent something new if that's the alternative.
Shimano would have to license XD, I can’t see that happening anytime soon.
I welcome any new standard with all the enthusiasm that I can muster for a Conservative election broadcast. Let’s hope that Shimano doesn’t screw this up.
and there was me hoping for some news, I had heard it was launching April, then may and now rd 3 XCO.
might be interested in this though.
Although STW is probably on an embargo so will pull this.
XD's great. It's only when you get crap mechanics that haven't heard of copper grease and wrench the cassette on that it's a problem.
XD is lame, I’d rather Shimano invent something new if that’s the alternative.
Zero issues when lubed properly here, lots more with the previous designs, it might get them some Shimano or nothing/die fanbois over but they are coming from a long way back here so being incompatible isn't going to help them
Splined like centerlock....sweet
and the other thing to note from the leak, a 10-45 11spd cassette,
Quite excited by this, hoping it'll be compatible with an eagle cassette and chain assuming they're using the same spacings and chain width etc.
Once my gx eagle mech implodes again I'll be very tempted to swap over. The other option is NX eagle is confirmed for early june and just treat the mech as a consumable (more than they already are). Might be a bit more durable being heavier than gx eagle.
Shimano design inspiration.
And 51 why? To be 1 more than Sram 😔.
Maybe it's so they can arrange pick up teeth at 17 tooth intervals in 3 sets.
And 51 why? To be 1 more than Sram
Beaten to it.
Nevermind though, I don't think Sram Eagle E-tap is too far away, will XTR 1x12 be Di2? Doubtful!
If the three black cogs on that cassette pictured are aluminium then I'm out....SRAM are miles ahead on weight with mostly steel. GX is great value for the weight.
Nevermind though, I don’t think Sram Eagle E-tap is too far away
production units already spotted on race bikes on the wild (NOT on Nino’s bike either) so reckon by the end of the race season. I already have the LBS on instruction to order me one the second it becomes available to them 😆
And 51 why? To be 1 more than Sram
Well, if you'll excuse me, Duh!
Of course they've gone one more, that's the game now innit, SRAM did 10-42 first, Shimano added an 11-46, SRAM went 10-50, so shimano have bested them with Juan Moar! Yay!
XD Driver?
If not complete idiots.
Really? In fairness shimano did have a dinky driver cassette a very long time ago, go and Google their "Capreo" groupset... Sadly they didn't see fit to re-tool the concept for MTBs when SRAM brought out XD so we've had several years of SRAM fanbois boring on about the magic of Juan Less at the other end of the cog collection...
I'd like to believe this is shimano getting their shit together, delivering better quality and being about on par with features, but I think we'll have to wait and see...
production units already spotted on race bikes on the wild (NOT on Nino’s bike either) so reckon by the end of the race season. I already have the LBS on instruction to order me one the second it becomes available to them
Yeah I saw the ones on Nino's bike, and the very recent other sightings, I'll be sitting down when they give the price though... Looking at the current road red Etap rear mech and shifter I reckon it'll be £600+ just for the rear mech and shifter, although that's pretty much inline with current XTR Di2.
Really? In fairness shimano did have a dinky driver cassette a very long time ago, go and
Well.... if STW is to be believed buying a new freehub is like selling a kidney so why get another new one to go Shimano 10t? It also won't be compatible with anything else for at least 12 months maybe more.
It also doesn't need to be different - they are offering nothing more but insisting you go their way - locking you in - again one of the many complaints about XD.
I suppose as you are starting at XTR it will be 12-24 months before it hits XT/SLX levels so you are not worried about getting GX users over, but it's a hard justification to go from XX to XTR untested and be left with a freehub they might not even stick with.
For all the complaints about XD being different this is just pig headed by shimano.
Good luck to them, they have been off in the wilderness and cruising down the nile on 1x for the last few years.
Would have been brave but also good business essence to have gone with XD compatibility.
Shame really.
"Of course they’ve gone one more, that’s the game now innit, SRAM did 10-42 first, Shimano added an 11-46,"
11-46 is less than 10-42.
this is just pig headed by shimano.
Is it? I think they've just woken up to the way the marketplace is operating, they maintained the basic (backwards compatible) HG freehub/cassette interface for what ~35 years? Other manufacturers were able to sell their own versions, in theory a hub you bought 20 odd years ago to use with 8speed could still be used today for 11speed, did that move buy any significant customer or OEM loyalty when XD threw a cross compatibility spanner in the works?
SRAM did it first and proved customers, and more importantly OEMs will adopt new standards, even one that more users struggle to maintain, all for that one less tooth feature...
I'm not that fussed about a massive gear spread, so that 10-45 cassette looks really interesting.
SRAM did it first and proved customers, and more importantly OEMs will adopt new standards, even one that more users struggle to maintain, all for that one less tooth feature…
1t which is 10%
Xd gave you something significantly different because it was a big extra gear. Now for no technical difference shimano want to add more standards for no benefits ...
Do we really need 51?
I found 1x with a 40 was plenty. I've currently got a hope 46 and that's great.
You just get used to what you ride.
The bigger we get the more problems we create.
This is just another way to make us part with our hard earned cash. They are milking us and we fall for it every time.
Just my grumpy 10 pence worth
It would be good if Shimano kept to the same freehub/cassette interface for road and MTB. I wonder if we'll see changes on road components to achieve that. (In fact it would even better if all Shimano road/MTB group set components became interchangeable.)
Xd gave you something significantly different because it was a big extra gear. Now for no technical difference shimano want to add more standards for no benefits …
Out of interest where is the outer most axle load bearing bearing on a Sram rear hub, on the drive side?
Where you can see it... Is it a massive fail point? Or just one of those ooo I don't like it things?
I wonder if shimano have shared the freehub specs with hope, dt, ck etc.
Edit. I guess we will know how they approach it when somebody actually sees it and puts a couple of years onto it.
Where you can see it… Is it a massive fail point? Or just one of those ooo I don’t like it things?
Yes, axles used to fail in the middle in the days of blocks, one of the plus points of the shimano system was to spread the bearing as far apart as possible and better support the axle.
Do axles fail on xd is a better question?
Why the big deal about a different freehub between Shimano and SRAM? It's not as if you can run Shimano shifters and SRAM mechs, or Shimano brakes and SRAM levers is it. Road bikes have had the choice of Campag and Shimano freehubs for years and the world hasn't caught fire because of it.
Why the big deal about a different freehub between Shimano and SRAM? It’s not as if you can run Shimano shifters and SRAM mechs,
er you can at 11sp
The point being a lot of people made a huge fuss about XD and needing to buy a new freehub... now there is a very good 10-XX freehub design out there that has been working for about 5 years now and Shimano want a new one. I'm sure the press release what technical($$) issue they were solving there and why the innovation is driving stuff forward.
At the moment I'm more interested in if they have managed to get the price & weight in the ball park of SRAM.
If they are only entering with XTR then it's going to be 2 years before they challenge GX and NX will be out by then and equipped on a lot of new bikes - will you get OEM XTR12 with a choice of wheels?
Mods - shouldn't this thread be deleted???
Not for reasons of commercial confidentially, I'm just worried about Mike's heath.
thanks for the concern.... Genuine questions though feel like this could be a very interesting launch when the details come in. I remember a similar hype around the Shimano dropper which some of the big fans reckoned would be a market killer 😉
The 10-45 looks ideal. Currently on 11-36 10sp and feel a little extra spread would be useful at times.
Really don't need 12sp but seems that the market will force it. Maybe a Sunrace 11sp upgrade first though.
I'm not sure I'd want bigger range but having closer ratios would be nice. With 11spd 11-42 I rarely use the top or bottom ratios (30T front) I'd sooner have 12spd 12-42 than 10-46 or whatever.
A new freehub design just "because", yeah a bit meh. A Hope freehub is £60 and swapping one out is a five minute job (assuming you aren't cleaning the pawls and springs) so not that big a deal but it's something that as consumers we could do without.
1t which is 10%
Xd gave you something significantly different because it was a big extra gear.
Thanks, yes I understand the advantages of a 10t sprocket, and clearly so do shimano hence they've (finally) followed SRAMs lead...
But Shimano were never going to adopt someone else's proprietary interface design, they pretty much never do, that is fundamentally against their corporate philosophy as I understand it. Ultimately they are damned for doing it, but they'd me more damned if they didn't...
I would be interested to see if they eventually do an HG profile, 12 speed cassette lower down the range (a bit like SRAM did by including 11-42 / 11-46, 11 speed cassettes for NX) accepting the reduced range that comes from not being able to go lower than 11t, but the advantage of being able to use HG design FH bodies for cheaper builds, that would be something that might make sense when SLX get's 12 speed...
The thing to remember as well is that all of this isn't really about attracting consumers to migrate to a new groupset on an existing bike, it's more about attracting OEMs to build bikes with Shimano parts again. So they need a proper Eagle equivalent, perhaps more importantly they need a GX Eagle equivalent (so 12 speed XT with something like a 10-50t Cassette?)...
In fact it would even better if all Shimano road/MTB group set components became interchangeable
What like they were for several decades?
Like I said, such things didn't help them from a business perspective in recent years, and TBF SRAM have proven that cross-compatibility, while it's a nice thing for some consumers, isn't actually a major market driver any more...
To use a tired analogy it's all gone a bit "Apple vs Windows" i.e. you buy a bike and with it opt in to an "Eco-system" of gears/brakes/hubs dictated by the component supplier chosen by the bike company, most people won't actually care much beyond whether it works, hits the appropriate price point and has the right features...
And of course who's to say the spacing isn't the same and those of you currently running 12 speed SRAM with an XD Cassette won't be able to use shimano parts with a SRAM cassette? people already do this with 11 speed shimano...
The thing to remember as well is that all of this isn’t really about attracting consumers to migrate to a new groupset on an existing bike, it’s more about attracting OEMs to build bikes with Shimano parts again.
Which brought me back to thinking of hubs and wheels, whats going to be up and running? Looking at an OEM cycle unless there is more in the pipeline are we looking 2020 for anything other than an XTR Factory build from a product year company?
cookeaa - I pretty much agree with everything you've said. However, we have seen some tentative move towards road/MTB comparability at the lower end and I wonder if the Gravel/Adventure market might help drive more? Mind you, Shimano might judge that to be another niche worth ignoring, much as they have with fatbikes.
I wonder if the Gravel/Adventure market might help drive more? Mind you, Shimano might judge that to be another niche worth ignoring, much as they have with fatbikes.
I think you are right shimano will probably wait too long to target the 'gravel' niche specifically, and SRAM will steal yet another lead.
Interestingly, reading / watching some of the (rather annoyingly hipster-ish) "Gravel Media" from the states they seem to like things such as flat-mount callipers, Road plus wheels/tyres, etc, so again I don't think new "standards" are going to put them off.
What might is inappropriate gear range, chubby lads, on uneven surfaces, with a little too much luggage probably won't notice the lack of a 10t sprocket, but they could miss a 40t+ at the other end, and I think double / triple chainsets probably still have a market there too.
Not sure it will - they're already showing an Ultegra clutch mech for that purpose
Yes, axles used to fail in the middle in the days of blocks, one of the plus points of the shimano system was to spread the bearing as far apart as possible and better support the axle.
I might be wrong here, but isn't that only with shimano hubs (and some similar) where the freehub bolts on and becomes an integral part of the hub, pushing the main bearings out under the cassette? A hope or dt hub has the 'wheel' bearings (as opposed to freehub bearings) more or less under the flanges regardless of freehub design.
Looking at an OEM cycle unless there is more in the pipeline are we looking 2020 for anything other than an XTR Factory build from a product year company?
Elsewhere i saw mention that DT already have the new freehub ready to go.
I might be wrong here, but isn’t that only with shimano hubs
There may be others who do it, but it is one of the big advantages with shimano's design, bare in mind that axles are getting longer with boost so the unsupported axle length is also growing. Last axle i snapped was a Hope for reference, and it went at the point you expect it to go, the end of the hub shell bearing in the middle.
Last axle i snapped was a Hope for reference, and it went at the point you expect it to go, the end of the hub shell bearing in the middle.
That would be in the ProII snapping days?
bare in mind that axles are getting longer with boost so the unsupported axle length is also growing
Is that true?
Is that true?
I don't think so. Boost grows the hub from the middle.
Don't think so, extra length is in the hub shell - unless he means didtance betwen the bearings inside the hub
Yeah, only if the freehub body was made wider would that be the case. I think. The drIveside flange (and bearing) is the same distance from the point the axel is held in the frame, isn't it?
Yeah, only of the freehub body was made wider would that be the case.
The bit in the middle is growing, the axle can flex more. part of the reason why very long headtubes aren't a great idea. At some point you need to start supporting the axle in the middle to deal with flex, you can oversize the axle, but if the central bore of the freehub is narrower to cope with the smaller 10spd sprocket you either end up with a step in the axle, or tiny bearing that last minutes, or both.
but if the central bore of the freehub is narrower to cope with the smaller 10spd sprocket you either end up with a step in the axle, or tiny bearing that last minutes, or both.
I don't know if it applies in all cases but I think the dt freehubs have the same outer bearing between normal and XD, it's just the freehub itself that has been cut away. Although now I look it up the hope pro4 is different.
Perhaps someone should move the bearings into the frame…
From that picture link up there ^^^ it does look like centrelock on the larger cogs and 10t XD on the end. Looks interesting.
I really hope shimano do use the xD driver, not that I expect they will. Life was nice and simple when everyone used the same one. The xD does the job, doesnt cost to use the patent so why not? The cynic in me thinks it might be to reduce competition and therefore protect margins as your bike will be wedded to a freehub design thus restricting competition between the 2 big S's
From that picture link up there ^^^ it does look like centrelock on the larger cogs and 10t XD on the end. Looks interesting.
Didn't early saint hubs use cup and cone & cartridge bearings in best of both/worst of both kind of system - they do have form for that sort of stuff
They have a published patent application here for a method of mounting a cassette with a cog of 10t or less:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180009505A1
The description sounds like it's describing a small 10t sprocket that attaches to the lowest sprocket (11 or 12t) on the cassette off the end of the freehub body?
They might not necessarily be using this patent though.
Mrmo wrote,
Last axle i snapped was a Hope for reference, and it went at the point you expect it to go, the end of the hub shell bearing in the middle.
They snapped there because of poor engineering and poor customer service- when Hope "developed" their 12mm axle they just took the old blank and made the hole bigger. It just wasn't strong enough, and had a lovely stress riser to boot. DT had the same issue for a short time, so they fixed it, Hope never bothered and instead got lots of lovely "aren't hope helpful" posts when they replaced their defective product with another defective product for free. Hurrah!
Early Saint hubs used cup and cone bearings with (replaceable bearing surfaces) in the hub shell and cartridges in the serviceable freehub. Arguably the best of both as the bearing types are suited to their respective load types and no issue with hub shells being binned due to worn surfaces as they were available separately.
Something pretty damn awesome is about to come…
Is it 2016 😉
Watching with interest, but will need some serious persuasion it’s worth me giving up my XD based drive trains. Totally agree that introducing a new free hub here would just becommercialism - trying to own the market. XD needed to be different to solve the problems posed by the old Shimano hub. There is no such requirement here.
What if Shimano have some way of making the new freehub backwards compatible though, so that new Shimano hubs can run both old and new cassettes? Not likely, but if they did, it would be a good reason to use their own design.
They have a published patent application here for a method of mounting a cassette with a cog of 10t or less
Looking at the illustrations the (rather small) cassette end bearing appears to be pressed directly into the smallest sprocket, with two bearings in the hub shell... Not sure I like that idea TBH, what I did notice was that the smallest sprocket shown in fig4 appears to be a 9 tooth.
That patent app looks more like an updated take on the old capreo design mentioned earlier, i.e. A shortened HG body with the smallest 2/3 sprockets keyed into one anothers faces, all held in place by a dinky lock ring... Which sort of begs the question, why didn't they develop this earlier? And are they going to sit on a 9t sprocket for a year or two just to give the next mid life face-lift release an extra selling point?
Will they have changed the way it all works though, 11spd works so much better than anything else including older xtr, apart from dropping chains backpedaling, however i recently replaced the shimano 42t cassette with a 46t sunrace and it doesn't drop the chain at all now.
Wonder if the new XTR freehub uses that neat disengagement feature that Dura-Ace has now. Can't see many who invest in new XTR caring about the cost of a new freehub in all that.
The bit in the middle is growing, the axle can flex more. part of the reason why very long headtubes aren’t a great idea.
There are positives in a longer unsupported central steerer tube section. It's only a negative if you have a fatigue-prone steerer design. Axles are different. OT I know, pedantic I know : )
Next snippet from elsewhere, current 11spd SLX, ST and XTR are fully 12 spd compatible. I have no idea if this is true but the claim is that there is a spacer in the shifter that can be easily removed to enable an extra click....
Having tried to dismantle shimano shifters in the past i am not volunteering to find out!
There are positives in a longer unsupported central steerer tube section. It’s only a negative if you have a fatigue-prone steerer design. Axles are different. OT I know, pedantic I know : )
I cut a huge groove in a 1 1/8th carbon steerer, a slight bump in a weld on the lower side of the top tube inside the headtube. It was creaking for weeks before i decided to investigate. Glad i did!
i'll just leave this here
ooosh
Does look worryingly like three aluminium cogs. Boooo.
The comments i have seen have it as Ti cogs, as per now, find out officially tomorrow.
If you look how big the cut outs are for the bigger cogs i would be a little surprised if it turns out to be aluminium.
Looks an interesting freehub design for that... be interested to see the proper info.
Someone may have made a mistake and it seems to have gone now.
I rather like the look of that. They look to have gone down the SRAM/RaceFace route with attaching the chainring to the crank.
Have I missed something re the cassette? It would seem that it would be unavoidable for the three largest rings to be made from anything other than aluminium?
Bodes well for XT - a refresh is due next year IIRC.
That is likely to be another direct mount chainring interface standard, which will delight the aftermarket manufacturers.