The $53 Box groupset is the crazy deal here. Especially the compact one for small hands that has no real equivalent. I always thought wide range 8s with clutch would be fine practically speaking for mtn bike, but haven’t put my money where my mouth is.
The AliExpress links were mostly just pointing out that $110 Microshift is meh.
Jones has a sale going on right now. The V3 complete bike prices are about $250 lower than they were during this same sale last year. They’re also offering free shipping this year which makes the total purchase about $190 lower compared to last year when all their complete bikes shipped at the same flat cost.
If you’re Jones bike curious, I can’t imagine the completes getting much cheaper than this. A mech brake V3 LWB was almost 3 bong last summer, now they’re 1.75 bongs. A V3 SWB starts at 1.64 bongs. Other stuff is on sale, too.
I think the HD/e frames are heavier/beefier with the idea that you’re going to but a big mid-drive BAFANG motor on them
Every time he has a sale I think I’m finally going to do it but I take a deep breath and remind myself that my Pugsley is like 85% of the way there (and 100% paid for)
I finally tried to set up a Prime 9 group I got from I think Bootus? a while back, and… I spent about an hour setting up and trying to dial the shifting and it sucks. Will not play nice through the range. I’m going to sleep on it and try again tomorrow but my initial impression is not good. I still have two 8s groups on the way, maybe they’re better?
Dang, sorry to hear that. It definitely seemed to be working okay before it was taken off the bike. Did you replace the kinked shift cable I mentioned when it was listed?
I straightened a kink and it seemed like it was pulling fine, but maybe I’ll replace completely. I was reading some stuff that said Box recommends a larger B gap than I’d typically run with Shimano. I’ll try that later.
I replaced the shift cable, futzed with the B adjust experimenting with too much and too little, threw the DAG-2 on again, pulled the shifter apart and watched its greased guts work through their paces.
I got it where it shifts mostly good but jumps down from 7 to 9 no matter what I do. I’m going to just call it HammerDrop technology or something and never think about it again.