Dura Ace and Ultegra for aero road bikes. RX800 for mid level stuff (doesn’t matter if 105 sticks around or if RX800 and 105 get merged because the only real difference is the crank/chainline and that’s easy enough to deal with). R7100 and G7100 crank/front derailleur variants and the rest can stay the same. Every dangler may as well have a clutch.
Shimano is probably too hard headed, but permanently merging RX400 and Tiagra should happen. I’ve already started to see some blending of stuff here at the OE level and choosing to spec RD4700 instead of RX400 is some bush league shit. 50/34 and 46/30 and drop the triple for good. They would be wise to adapt the RX600 crank to be used with 50/34, but again, Shimano is great at designing a new thing instead of optimizing a thing they have. Again R and G variants with cranks and pusher is the only thing that needs to be unique. The rest can just be a continuation of RX400
Sora and Claris will soldier on until Sensah and Micoshift finally get a real foothold with OE. This will accelerate rapidly when the first to 10 brand specs Sensah and highlights how god-awful the Claris and Sora pushers/danglers are.
The desire to spec affordable 1X bikes will keep Sram in the mechanical game for a long time. Sram are masters of amortizing tooling costs so Apex1 and Rival22 will likely continue to exist for the foreseeable future. Plus AXS just isn’t that great compared to Di2 and will likely never really challenge di2 (so Sram will have no choice but to keep the machines cranking out leapfrog mechanisms).
This is all really interesting - and yeah, sometimes the lower end groups have amazing tenure. I have 8spd shimano shit on my cargo bikes (Tektro cheap cable disc brakes too!) that is probably backwards compatible to the early Jurassic. Shimano does like to do unecessary novelty, but they aren’t afraid to play the hits too.
I’m curious what happens when Shimano gets some real pressure from Microshift and Sensah.
On this topic… if the Sram and Shimano can do ONE thing right with their next updates its to stop the fuckery with how rings interface with spiders. Intentionally building in some wonky cosmetic mis-matches is really starting to create issues at the shop level. I don’t see supply chain getting any better with things like OEM ring replacement and how weird Rival rings look on a Force or Quarq spider is a problem that isn’t going away.
Hey @ProCracknfailBro you probably pal around with some Srambros, tell your homies that while we would love to replace Rival with Rival and Force with Force, if they can’t supply rings we need to be able to mix and match without it looking weird. I get the desire to differentiate between spec levels, but if you’re on a shared BCD the rings need to all fit the same.
The lack of a Shimano 1x9 or 1x10 drop bar group is telling. I don’t think they are going to bother. There is a good chance Shimano will ultimately vacate the sub $1500 drop bar category completely.
Microshift is laser focused right now on filling gaps Shimano is leaving open.
the number of bikes i’ve seen rolling around lately with perfectly-functional-but-sinfully-ugly R7000 chainrings on R8000 cranks is unfortunate.
This is especially weird in the context of both 1) the extremely good cheap 1x10/11/12 Deore groups (if only they could keep them in stock…), and the fact that the RD-RX812 derailleur is basically an XT M8000 deraileur but with a modified cable arm for road pull.
Someone at Shimano knows how to make good 50-60$ wide-range 1x rear derailleurs.
Someone at Shimao knows how to take MTB derailleurs and re-engineer them a little to work with road shifter cable pull.
Those two someones need to end up in a bar togethers with some beers.
At least it seems like the smaller brands got to cash out before getting cut. Content will always be there, and the best stuff isn’t always from the big entities
But seriously who thought it was a good idea to go big on FKTs, or 3 mainstream roadie magazines. Talk about way too niche for a big brand like Outside. Meanwhile BQ is just rolling along
Did anyone else use Steephill.tv to follow pro cycling? Honestly it was the best and I am sad he is done updating and I would have paid for it vs. all the cycling journalism out there.
