Thanks for the Ultegra info, I’m glad to hear that they sorted out the slippery hoods.
The crank issue is puzzling and bad - maybe being a market leader means you have more extant pieces of your manufacture out there waiting to fail in interesting ways, but it does seem as if they have a real problem on their hands.
Looks like I might finally try Praxis?
Nah, da9000 lefts have been falling apart for years since they’re bonded together.
Ultegra left cranks do seem to have seen a small increase in just straight up breaking with r8000. They’re still not bonded so no seam to fail, so not sure why they break in half.
Still happens in very, very small numbers compared to how many are made, but it’s it’s such a dangerous thing to have happen.
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This.
I felt fine buying some and have zero worries about it. I had more concern about the strain gauge issue on the spider side.
There are manufacturers that would be overjoyed to have the failure rate that shimano cranks have. Sure there’s enough breaking to have a dedicated forum, but if you consider just how many are made and used worldwide it’s a very, very small percentage that fail.
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Expect to replace bottom brackets frequently with Praxis. Other than that they are good.
Easton EA90 is decent and their BSA bottom brackets seem better sealed than most BSA30 stuff. There’s also the option of the Cane Creek Hellbender NEO for this and it looks promising.
Sram Rival GXP is still a really good value option.
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Has FSA gotten better with their crabon cranks? I had a set that got replaced twice for the same failure.
i may be wrong, but my impression was the 6800 was epoxy bonded on the DS only and still hollow forged on the NDS, but 9000, R8000, and R9100 are all epoxy bonded on both the DS and NDS.
Interesting thing is that I haven’t heard anything about XTR failures. M9000 (but not M9020) was epoxy bonded on the NDS arm only, and M9100/M9120/M9130 are reportedly epoxy bonded on both DS and NDS.
tru
have GXP bbs meaningfully improved over the past few years? i have bad memories of absolutely wrecking nds bearings really fast (i think it was nds
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They’ve gotten better. Still no Shimano. But better than just about anything that has a 30mm spindle.
that’s good. i’ll hold onto my rival crank to use again another day then
If R8000 left cranks are bonded, then they’ve done it by some kind of magic, as there’s absolutely no visible seam. They’re almost indistinguishable from 6800 lefts.
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hmmm, maybe my recollection was wrong about the R8000s.
I’ve got an R8000 left arm in my hand and some 4x reading glasses and I can’t make out a parting line. where it could be bonded together.
Well why don’t you cut it in half and post the photos so we can see what it looks like on the inside?
I get why Amy knows so damned much about cranks, makes perfect sense. Why is Adem’s Shimano knowledge so deep? Add Fred to the mix and the coverage just has to be total.
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R8000 and 6800 LH is “hollow forged” in the classic sense.
R8000 and 6800 RH (along with 9000 and 9100 L and R) is the bonded clamshell design.
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coz power meter and I’d like to sell it.
Anybody have those Juin Tech cable hydro brakes? The Yokozuna branded ones seem good based on the bikepacking dot com review, but I seem to recall at least one tarcker had purchased the OEM ones. Is it @adem? How you like 'em?
Yeah I’ve got the 4-piston Juin Tech GT-Ps. Yokozuna was out of stock at the time so I rolled the dice on the Juin Tech ones straight off Aliexpress. They were about half the price, but also don’t come with rotors or fancy compressionless housing in the box - just the calipers and pads. As far as I can tell it’s exactly the same caliper as the Yokozuna Ultimo. I’m pretty sure “Yokozuna” is just Merry Sales rebranding them because they think that Americans will buy japanese-y sounding stuff more readily than they’ll buy chinese-y sounding stuff.
I’m running them with the Saint H03C finned pads and Jagwire compressionless housing, hooked up to Ultegra R8000 levers and clamping on some Shimano finned rotors. They’ve been on the bike for just a hair over a year and I’ve put about 1600 miles on that bike since then. I’m a ~215lb dude who likes to rip high-speed twisty 1000ft+ paved descents, and they’ve worked really well for me. They definitely stop better than TRP Spyres or Shimano CX77s. My only complaint is that the red adjuster knob backs out on its own, but I solved that with a dab of weak purple loctite.
The tiny volume of fluid does mean that they have some heat buildup issues - after a big descent I’ll occasionally hear the pads lightly going ‘shing shing shing’ against the rotors for a minute or two until the caliper cools down and the fluid contracts, but it doesn’t seem to be getting worse over time.
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Right on, thanks! I’m kinda over drop bar lever full hydro at the moment due to really annoying persistent leaks, think I’m gonna go back to compressionless housing cable discs and buy a set of these.
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