Dumb question: why not just ride with the factory grease and do the normal relubrication dance after it’s worn off?
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Wax
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That’s certainly what I have always done.
Gotta remove all of it to wax, and it’s easier to do off the bike. And factory grease attracts dirt and grime like nothing else IME.
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In my misguided fixie kid youth I used Phil Tenacious Oil as chain lube and I can assure you that “like nothing else” is incorrect.
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It’s not that it’s particularly difficult in terms of labor, but the chemicals are not great to deal with, proper disposal of them can be a hassle, and the process is time consuming. This product claims to be totally safe for the environment (can pour it down the drain) and work in 10 minutes, leaving the chain in a state more receptive to wax.
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It’s difficult to even acquire “real” mineral spirits now. I used the white low-VOC/odorless variety last year for stripping chains, and it definitely doesn’t work as well as the OG clear spirits.
This stuff sounds a lot like organic ski base cleaner if you want to try other stuff at half the markup.
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this is the main problem for me. if you live in a dusty area, it just turns into black grease cakes. pulleys will just be absolutely caked in it every ride until it’s all worn off.
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12-speed GRX:
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So then microspline for road/gravel, huh? Oh, duh, the XTR smaller cassette.
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Maybe, or might just be the choice that particular person made. They might stick with HyperGlide and 11-tooth cogs for “official” GRX parts. 
im guessing that this 10-45t usage is a one-off case. Shimano road groups and mtb groups use the same chains so it would be pretty easy to swap between cassettes.
that being said, shimano rarely duplicates work, so perhaps the 1x bikes use microspline to take advantage of the 10-45t cassette while the 2x bikes use shimano road freehubs with an 11t cog?
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ding ding
would bet the 2x will be spec’d to use the CS-HG710-12 11-36 cassette with the new hyperglide12 freehub body, and they’ll just tell you to use a hub with a Microspline freehub body for the big cassette 1x setups.
Notably: CABLE PULL ROAD 12 FROM SHIMANO. Ain’t dead yet!
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I’m not saying you’re wrong by any means, but having the choice of 1x vs 2x also dictate the freehub you have to use would seem a bit odd to me. But I guess this is mostly a detail for product managers at big bike brands to worry about.
1x vs 2x isn’t going to dictate the freehub, it’s whether you want the 10t to bump up your 1x range. Same deal as the lower end Eagle groups that use HG and an 11 top cog.
But I don’t think Shimano currently has any 12-speed cassettes suitable for 1x that start with an 11-tooth cog? I’m not really up on MTB stuff at all so possible I’m missing something there.
Yeah, we’ll see what gets released with GRX 12 and if they include something with a big cog that can swap onto HG.
not necessarily saying that it’s a smart thing for Shimano to do - I think Shimano not putting road 12 on Microspline was actually really dumb, if they don’t want 10T top cogs on the road groups there’s nothing stopping them from making 11T top cog MS cassettes, and having their road and MTB groups on different freehubs leads to shit like this when you want to make a blurring-the-lines groupset.
But it would definitely follow in the footsteps of 11-speed GRX’s “we’re going to borrow mountain bike parts where possible instead of making new SKUs for the sake of new SKUs” product strategy. Maybe Shimano will make an HG12 11-46 cassette and using the XTR cassette at unbound is just because the dedicated GRX cassette wasn’t ready, but I’d be surprised if that’s the case.
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