I Went Out On My Bike.

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I kinda gave up with the branding scinario after having had a few Shimano Deore XT bearing wear in not a lot of time, and the Deore XT bearing were a horrendous price, so I put ordinary loose bearings in them and they work fine. Then about 8 or so years ago... Maybe 10 years, Shimano introduced the swinging arm rear mechs and the gear change suffered.
I have 8 speed STI gear levers somewhere. They are not Deore level... But they should work ok. I think I may have new ones.
In recent years, I have found that the smoothness of the gear change and the reliability has ben better on the budget end then the dear end of the market. While those flimsy Shimano Tourney rear mechs may not be ideal, and one can't adjust the end stop screws in the right place and still get first gear, so occasionally the odd rear mech mashes up after hitting the spokes, they are so cheap to buy and have such a lovely light smooth gear change, that even if one destroys one, one says "Oh dear" and just goes ahead and buys another Tourney. They were only a tenner to replace. Probably more like £1.50 trade or less if buying from Japan? (I could not get trade prices). Can't go wrong. At the huge retail prices of Deore components they don't give one the value for money that they once did. When I first started the trade the "Deore" model really did last a long time. We didn't even sell Tourneys as things like Exage Mountain etc were soo much better. But Deore... Few could afford, but they were worth the extra because they outlasted other mechs. Shimano chains were quickly replaced even on new bikes and a nice Sedis took its place, as Shimano chains wore quick and so it was more economical to take a brand new bike and put a Sedis chain on, then use the Shimano chain until it was worn out! I still have a Sedis chain on my Galaxy.

Let me know if you are interested in the levers and I can look to see if I still have them.

That's very nice of you MG, thank you. I think there's an Alivio one which looks the same as Deore, just rebranded and cheaper. I'm down to two bikes now so I don't mind spending a bit on this one now, it should stave off having to switch to invest in a modern 1 x groupset. The modern mechs have little clutches of course, which would be nice, the gear range is inferior.

My second bike is a tourer and frankly I could have... Should have just bought parts for my Galaxy.

Hope you have more pleasant rides.

If you are stuck and need a gear lever PM me.

In regards to the 1x groupsets, they are fine on a 5 speed, not too bad as a 6 speed, but 7 or above and there are these issues. First is excessive wear due to chain angles which are avoided with a double or triple chainset bu adopting a sensible riding style. Gear range is limited so to compensate for this on mountain bike use, they cram in more gears on the back, and increase the size of the lower gears, thus the weight being saved of not having an extra ring or tow is transferred to the back of the bike. The second issue is due to the extreme angles the chain has to go, the chain is prone to jumping off the chainring of the chainset, so it needs a "Catcher" or a pair of chainring collars either side. So the weight one saves is put back on. Another issue is that the chains, which are thinner to begin with are forced into an awkward angle and is most stressed in the very gear thatis at the most extreme angle so the stresses on the chain are extreme. The extreme angles also loose quite a lot of efficiency. Think how good a single speed direct straight aligned drive chain feels to use. If the gearing is just right to the speed and terrain one is cycling on, nothing beats it!
Now with the extreme angle, one is loosing a lot of efficiency especially in top and bottom gear. Add to this, the fact that to cram in so many cogs at the rear, one has to increase the axle width and frame dropout width to compensate, the wider one increases this, the stiffer and stronger the frame has to be made at the rear chain and seat stays, so one has added both un-neccessary weight and has also decreased the efficiency, as the further away from the position of drive that the dropouts have to be positioned, the less efficient the drive is.
Getting the gear range in is always going to be a compromize as one ideally wants wide gearing to tackle steep hills and keep up with ones pedals when one is at speed on the flat and downhills without leaving too many gear gaps where there are big jumps inbetween these gears.
Of all the gear systems I have used over the years, the most reliablw best "All round" gear system is a 21 speed with a custom built cassette or freewheel (I prefer freewheels as one has stronger pawls. Casettes tiny pawls tend to be prone to early wear compared to a quality freewheel... (Which today is harder to find).
The gear range is only "Acceptable" in todays market as a 21 speed, BUT, one can customize the gear rings to enlarge the range. I have tried (And have had, or have bikes) with many more gears but to be honest, it is a bit of a "What is the best point where I can keep a good gear range with reducing the number of gears without leaving large gear gaps?" This is why instead of a 24 or a 27 speed system I prefer a 21, as 15 and 18 struggle in gear gaps (18 seems the boarderline) and another issue that comes to light is that a 21 speed system can have dirt in the cables and still give a reasonable gear change, while at the slightest hint of dirt in a 27 or above gear system (9 or more at the rear) the orecision needed in adjustment to get smooth changing gears goes all to pot when one has a small amount of dirt in the cable or a slight amount of extra friction. Gear cables only need changing once every four or five years with a 21 speed, but with a 27 speed (9 or kore at the back) and one needs them changed at least yearly. I was changing some every 6 months and they never had a good change. They were always inbetween gears no matter how free the cables ran or how well adjusted. All these fancy new designs were to try to overcome this main issue.
Hub gears have also been tried with enlarged ranges, but the more one crams inside the hub, the more prone they are to failure. A 2 or 3 speed hub has large component parts and not a great deal moving, so will last years. Build a hub with 5 or more gears (I have a Sachs Elan 12 speed on one of my bikes) and one has to treat it with care. The other downside is that anything more then about 5 hub gears add a lot of weight at the back of the bike and the hub axles need to be dead straight to avoid gear jam. In operation, they are not really suitable for offroading, but they are good for road cycling.
So I have to conclude, that while gearing is a compromize, but I personally aim for a 21 speed deraileur system and failing that, an 18 speed also using a triple chainset.
I usually have a triple chainset with 24T or 26T to a 50 or 52T (24 to 52T preferred Depends what rings I have available) and 13 to 34T customized 7 speed freewheel (14 to 32 six speed as a compromize on one or two of my bikes due to parts availability. Shimano used to sell 13 to 32T six speed freewheels years ago). Custom worked out gearing to eliminate gaps. Shimano brought out the Megarange which had a huge gearing jump. I use these to get parts to customize my own freewheels, but rebuild them to eliminate the gear gaps. Combine them with older freewheels. One can do the same with 7 speed cassettes too. It does take about five freewheels to make one good one if that makes sense?

I'll tell you my thoughts when I have a it more time but now I wanted to show you this. As you can see the locking bolt on the grips is in the way of the trigger, they're ergon grips, so I can't just rotate them, I have another pair which I can fit and then the brake levers can go down to 45 degrees.

Thanks for your offer, I'm good for brake levers, I just go with the cheapest hydraulic brake set these days. I've run Hope disk brakes and LX V brakes on this bike but I'm happy with the Altus ones, they're fine for my needs.

I've given up on freewheels after my Suntour XC block started loosing teeth on a tour, I nursed the bike back to the ferry with only 2 or three working gears. That was some weird freehub / freewheel that Suntour only did for a short while, think it was called micro spline.

I'm not a natural when it comes to mechanics, jobs that I think will take half an hour routinely turn into two and a half. I draw the line at building custom freewheels, that might drive me nuts. I know a lot of that 7 speed stuff is good, the old silver Shimano 7 speed V brake lever/ shifters are great and one thing I notice, the old 7 speed SIS rear mechs always seem to be on working order, no matter how badly rusted and seized the rest of the parts are on the old bikes I was picking up from the dump.

Hey MG, I've not had the time to go riding and have been on the most outrageous spending spree. If I could ride, I wouldn't be buying parts compulsively but I'm stuck at home thinking about bikes none stop. I did get out once for 40 minutes on the Halo wheelset and they have transformed the nimble little Cove Handjob xc bike into a thundering brute, it's seriously fun ploughing through everything in its path. Err... I got back home and it seemed like it would be a good idea to have a lighter set of wheels as well, something to restore its agility, so I ordered some 36 hole xt hubs, 2mm black Halo Aura plain gauge spokes on Mavic Xm719 rims. The idea is to have fewer bikes, so somehow it seemed like the sensible thing to do. I am down to just two bikes now and enough parts to build one more if I had a frame. Haha, life seems a bit boring without a bike build on the go. How are you doing with your collection?

I am fine. I have just noticed your replies.

Wheels. For offroading I can see the sense in heavily built rims though I do have a few mixed feelings through experience. Years ago the old 26" rims were wide. Different styles were tried for different reasons. I liked the lovely concave rims back in the late 80's.
Now someone started to cut down Mavic 700c rims to make lightweight and thin 26" rims and it was found that running thin touring width rims were less suseptable to denting the rims, as the tyres would baloon out more. The old heavier wider rims were more likely to catch. I once ruined two rims on the one race hitting the same hidden stone in a pot hole!

First of all a fashion I am against with road bikes (And mountain bikes even more so!), and that is using less spokes but having a stiffer heavier duty rim, and here is why... First, I fully would understand getting a heavier duty rim (In theory) but when one uses less spokes, the remaining spokes have more tension on them and since this trend, I have (When I was working) had to replace a lot or rims and build new wheels as spokes have cracked the rims and on many occasions, pulled clean tnrough the rim. Another common issue is broken spoke nipples also caused by the very high tension needed to compensate for the lack of spokes in the wheel. Now there are wheels invented which use few spokes but then compensate with thick heavy duty spoke nipples and one such design I had were on Shimano wheels for rim brakes (Mountain bike) where the nipples were fixed on the hub and the spoke heads were fitted onto the rim. While the rims were strong, I dis find due to the lack of spokes that the wheels flexed a lot.
So my preference is for a well made and good quality 36 hole (Or 32 hole if one wants to save weight) narrow rim. Lots of ideas have been tried. Marin once made the big mistake of selling bikes with aluminium spoke nipples to save weight. Every bike sold had to have every nipple replaced with conventional ones!
I have another preference with wheels which may surprize a lot of people, and that is that I do not like stainless steel spokes. Why? Well. Because of the one trait they have. As they age they weaken. Now conventional steel spokes wear out and eventually break at the head where the wear takes place, and this is visible, so if one spoke goes one checks the rest, and rarely will more then one spoke break at a time.
However, with stainless steel spokes they tend to suddenly break in the middle of the spoke and give no warning. No visible signs of wear. (I have seen a sign once as I was trueing a wheel and there was only a second or two before I saw the spoke weaken and the material stretch before it went). The other thing I noticed with stainless steel was that once one spoke snapped, it wasn't long before more snapped. While replacing about three stainless steel spokes in a customers wheel and then trueing up his wheel several more spokes snapped in my hands! I replaced them, and he rode it. A few days later more had snapped. Never ever had issues like that with ordinary spokes, but with stainless steel it happens, and it is frightening when one witnesses it! Especially if one is on the bike while it happens!
Yes, I agree there are different qualities of stainless steel spokes, but while I have some of my bikes with stainless steel spokes, if the one goes, I am very tempted to rebuild the lot using conventional spokes.

Stainless steel spokes are not a new idea. Very old bikes once had them and I was wondering in those days why the fasion dropped. I found out years later! I also saw the odd old bike having stainless steel rims as well. Aluminium rims have been around since the 1930's and are good. Tried and tested over many years. On old grass track racing bikes (Which were popular manybyears ago) they used inch pitch chains for strength and somw rode bamboo rims. I remember being shown these. I have an old hub with an inch pitched fixed wheel sprocket somewhere. It had an early aluminium rim for tubalars. The rim was passed it so I dissasembled the wheel and chucked the rim.
Many bike designs have been in, died ad come back in recent years. Casette hubs.. A very early design reserected in the mid 1980's by Shimano. Intergrated headsets. I have a 1926 bike that has them. They died as it was possible that a broken bearing could split through the race and ruin the frame. Is actually more likely to happen today if cages are used to hold bearings.
Many other old designs coming back. One was oval chainrings. Those have come in and out of fasion many times. Each time they invent a new name for them! One issue was to get the most out of them, one needed to turn the angle to as near as 90 degrees as one could to the angle they came out of the factories at, as the angles set actually hampered performance rather then enhanced performance. My friend did this and lead a mountain bike race. He was first position for two laps until he had a puncture.


I was looking at your grips. Is there room to move the levers in a little to avoid the conflict between the grip and the lever?

Going back to nice heavy duty wheel rims. If they are wide, you will need a much wider and deeper tyre to prevent them from denting, and a little hint for cycling through the thick clay mud in South Wales. Wide front tyre, narrow back tyre. More shingle and gritty terrain in places like Brechfa. A medium to wide tyre front and back is best. Brechfa ruins brake pads in one trip. The one place where discs are better. I actually prefer rim brakes as there is more leverage, if one has good quality brakes to begin with. You should try Magura rim brakes or one of those cam action cantilever brakes that are sompowerful they twist the seat stays! Never use them on the front! Hydraulic discs tend to be preferred these days. They are a bit if a love hate affair for me! Love the way they work. Hate repairing the things and trying to get the brake pads (Why did they make so many different designs!)
Other then that, go for it!

The narrow XM 719 is a really easy rim to true and I'll use it for roads, byways, cycle paths that kind of thing, with 2.1" tyres. I'd use them with narrower Ritchey Rizer bars and a longer stem and have the bike in XC mode and with Hi Rise bars on tours.

The Halo rims are wide 32 hole rims weighing 740g each, there's no flex in them whatsoever so I'm running them with high volume 2.3" tyres. They're for bashing around and winter use. I'll use them with Hi Rise bars and shorter stem, in hooligan mode.

I've swapped out the grips that were obstructing the trigger shifters and have set the brake levers at a 45 degree angle.

M going to attempt a service if the forks at some point but it's hard to find any manuals online. They're Manitou Black Elite 100 - 120mm coil forks (2003). I bought them second hand two and a half years ago and have 3,500 miles use on them since. They feel fine but it's playing on my mind.

I may just top them up with oil and they have little grease ports on the back of the lowers. I don't really want to disassemble them without instructions. The price of a service is £100, finding straight steerer, QR forks is getting tricky. These cane with the bike which I only paid £40 for. It was a bargain but the parts are retro.... Octalink Crank, etc..and all very dear to replace.