The Hack SHIMANO Doesn't WANT YOU TO SEE! (Drop Bar CUES...NOW?!)

did we just discover something that's not supposed to work but actually works hey everybody I got the apron on so you guys know what that means it is Cave of bad ideas time microchip sent me a box of uh components to play with and test out their compatibility this is their sword rear derailer with a clutch in this video I'm going to test out its capacity to see if it will work with my favorite uh gearing combination at the moment which is a 40 24 in the front and a 11 to4 2 I believe or 40 in the rear uh pretty pretty wide range and it stresses most rear derailers currently I've got the grx I believe it's a 812 rear derailer which is 11-speed uh 2X and has massive range capacity I think it's I think it might be shimano's finest derailer at the moment to go along with the microshift uh rear derailer they also sent over their brifters uh again there's left and right we're going to do a 10-speed 2X with their with their sword derailer this isn't very exciting it should work we know we know the conclusion here so in order to make it a little bit spicier to make it a little bit more interesting I'm going to answer a question or a rumor that's been floating about and that is can you use the microshift sword brifter to shift Shimano Q's Shimano Q's as you know is going to be replacing all their low to mid-range mountain bike uh group sets as well as some of their drop bar group sets so think uh tiagra this isn't a thing yet but it's all but expected uh I've been doing various hacks on trying to use cues with drop bars mostly with friction again I get it a lot of people don't want to go there and then they're waiting for that indexed option which hasn't been announced yet so it could be a year two years many years but in the spirit of experimentation in the cave ad of bad ideas we're going to see if this works now but it shouldn't work but the internet uh Rumor Mill kind of suggests that it might the micro shift sword shifter uses a cable pull ratio which is pretty close to the old Shimano dyis Q's uses something closer to to one to one I think someone on our Discord measured it and it was like 1.13 for the for the shifter so pretty so possibly close who knows but we're going to figure that out today so in order of operations I think the first thing I'm going to test is the capacity of the microshift sword rear derailer is it big enough to do a truly wide- range double again 4024 1140 42 in the rear if it if it is I will be supremely impressed because that means there's another draer on the market out there with a clutch um that has just as good a capacity as you know the Shimano 812 JX beard which is awesome we've bought two of those one is on my bike uh one is on laur's bike so so that's the first thing we're going to test the next thing we'll do is I will pull this out after confirming either yay or nay that this has awesome capacity we'll install the q's rear derailer try to make it work with the microshift sword shifter that's you know I suspect is 50/50 some people say it does some people say it doesn't uh but at the end of this video we'll know all right let's let's switch cameras and get hacking okay before I start mucking around with things I wanted to show you guys the setup so of course we've got the Uno shifter the only shifter that will shift literally every cable derailer out there on the market my favorite chain ring combination 4024 and this is an 1142 I believe and 10-speed and again the amazing grx uh I think it's a a12 rear draer 2x 11speed massive capacity and does this combo like a champ I I think for me this is currently The Benchmark rear derailer in terms of running wide range doubles personally front derailer is Shimon q and in friction everything works great so the first thing we're going to do is take off the grx rear um put on put on the microshift sword and see if it can handle this capacity put in low scur there pop off the chain momentarily undo the cable retention bolt uh on the rear derailer hopefully I can reuse the same uh cable now I'm going to remove the grx rear derailer all pretty straightforward so the derailer cages look pretty similar if anything the uh sword one's actually a little bit longer the geometry of the knuckle arm and everything is a little bit different U so I'm hopeful that this this will actually work that okay drer is in so cable rting is still a little wonky goes off at an angle uh but whatever um I'm not going to bother clipping this cuz I'm hoping to reuse the the shift cable so one thing I notice right off the bat is that this is a lot saggier so it's not picking up quite as much cable okay let's give them we're in the Big Chain ring here can get to the low you're just fine put it back into smaller chain ring uh what was this telling me it's not taking up as much slack as the jxb a bit of a bummer this is kind of beyond the cap it stated capacity I think the biggest cassette this is this officially can take this is like at least maybe four 46 teeth bigger okay so what have we learn here that once again the Uno shifter will shift the micro shift sword bear derailer even though the page looks similar in length to the grx it doesn't quite have the same takeup capacity so probably not the best for super big rear cassettes so not your 11 to 40s not your 11 to 42s I think what I'm going to do next instead of shortening the chain which is something I want to avoid till the very last minute is uh let's test shifting compatibility between the q's rear derailer and a micro shift shifter uh so I'm going to pop off the sword again reusing the cable putting the on we'll do a quick capacity test to see how it handles this setup um I suspect it should be fine I mean this is what I had on the ribbon Del and it has similar gearing so it's it's working okay and then from there I'm going to mount this uh dummy handlebar with the sword shifter and uh put this one back on and we'll see if we can get it to index and answer the question if you can shift with the sword shifter and a uh Q's rear derailer so C is mud okay everybody Quick Change of characters here we have the shanu q's uh rear derailer that is the 10 11p speed version uh designed for 2 by very important uh we can see here in the small small combination it's taking up the slack it's this isn't drooping like it was with the microshift sword um so so far so good let's see what it looks like going through the low gears all right looking good throughout the low gear range putting it through the big ring combination again shifting really good uh so this appear so the q's appears to have about as much uh capacity as the grx so if you're looking for a grx alternative either because of AV or price and are running it friction then yeah 100% uh this seems like a really cool option but the big question why you're probably here why I'm doing this video is to answer the question if the sword Drifter can be used with a q's rear draer lots of lots of Rumblings on the internet um this is supposed to work with dyis rear shifters and some people say that Q's uses a similar cable pull as diny so by transitive properties it should work but unless you do it on the stand or actually do it in real life don't know so what I'm going to do is Mount this dummy handlebar uh onto the bike just run a stretch a cable through here and we'll see if we can make it index what you guys are seeing me do here is checking for derailer hanger alignment one of the big advantages of running friction is that this is almost a non-issue you never have to worry about it but since I am setting up an index system it's absolutely essential that you do this I'm using the Park Tool uh derailer alignment gauge three I think this came out a couple years ago our friends at Park Tool did send this over as well as some other tools to help support uh the cave of bad ideas so big thanks to park tool for supporting the channel here the dag three or a tool like it I think is definitely an essential for the home mechanic oftentimes you can chase down a shifting problem by adjusting the cable adjusters and still not get it right and typically that's a sign that your uh derailer hanger is probably tweaked and this becomes more of an issue the more speeds you add just because the um the derailer has to be aligned that much more precisely so if you can afford it I would definitely add some sort of derailer hanger alignment tool it's kind of a a second tier tool after after you get most of your bases covered but it's absolutely essential especially if you're running an index system all right so okay so this is what we've got uh pardon the mess here it's kind of a metaphor for my life sometimes uh Shimano Q's 10 11speed double rear derailer uh the cassette here is an HG compatible cassette 10-speed again I think this is 40 or 42 I'm not quite sure which which exactly you know details uh 4024 you can tell from my fine uh cabling job which will no doubt give some mechanics a heart attack um we adding up here to the handlebars with the microshift sword um 10-speed shifter I do have my original handlebars here with the Uno shifter it's still manipulating the brakes and the front derailer is still connected to that friction shifter uh I don't know if this will work so that's why I'm not like fully committing to undoing all this stuff these videos take so much longer than you guys think I think the end results probably going to be like 6 to 8 minutes but I've been in the cave here for um I don't know a couple hours um so we'll see if it works um somehow there's a little bit more slack I don't know what I did different but there you go to my knowledge this is is the first time that this has been tried at least tried and recorded lots of rumors about whether it will work or it doesn't work and I think the official statements are that they are incompatible but again some very smart people on our Discord did some cable pull measurement and it suggested that it should work so that's why I'm going through all this uh hopefully it does work because I hate disassembling my personal bikes um for these random things so okay stick the camera right there and we're going to go through the gears again this is in the small chain ring okay so first gear second gear third 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 holy smokes it works um it looks like the rear derailer is tracking pretty good as I'm pedling there isn't any excessive friction you know suggesting that uh chains rubbing oh I should note this is an 11speed chain so 10 11sp speed rear 10 11speed rear draer CU we know if you watched this channel rear derailers are dumb it's shifters that determine the number of speeds 10speed cassette so I think what I'm going to do going down okay I think I'm gonna bring it up to the big ring as it were and we'll go through the gun just to make sure um I'll put it over here so you guys can see how it's tracking I mean it looks it looks pretty good like this is supposedly not supposed to work but it looks like it's working let's do two shifts at a time um did we just discover something that's not supposed to work but actually works it kind of seems like it like uh you I'm going to finesse the chain length to deal with some of the slack in the a low smaller chain R I don't know how much lad to them they have it's definitely Loosey Goosey here but still manageable I wouldn't run this gear normally um you know once you're in the third gear it's looking pretty good yeah this totally work going to go back into the Big Chain ring and we'll do it one more time yeah I don't know if I have if I shorten the chain anymore this combo this combo is already not great it's going to be consider really not great so I might just leave the chain length and not be in the high gear when I'm in the small chain ring which I think I can remember to do we're all intelligent people the system doesn't have to do everything for us um let's go back into the small ring I mean usually when I'm in the small chain ring I'm going to be in at least let's say this this gear and then if if not generally over here so even if this combo uh is a nogo because of all the loose cable whatever I'm not going to I'm smart enough to accept responsibility for this well that was quite a surprise I didn't expect this to be the outcome I thought for sure that it would probably shift great for the first five gears and then somewhere at gear six things would sync would be off sync and it wouldn't get to the the big um big Cog in the back but so far even with this really crappy cable run it's totally shifting uh so you know what this means everyone is that you don't have to wait for Shamano to come out with brifters to run cues uh you can do a mix and match with some microship components and it'll do it um which I think is pretty cool hey there after a long night of tweaking the bike it is the morning after and uh off camera after I stopped filming I was doing some finessing and I found it was shifting well enough that I decided to commit to shifting over to the sword and q's setup moving to the rear we've got the Shimano Q's 10 10 11speed rear derailer an 11speed chain with a 10-speed HG compatible um cassette I don't remember the exact make this might be Shimano this might be sde but it's an 11 to 42 the cranks are by dixna L crank 160 length nine-speed shifting chains in a 40 to 24 combo I did find that I had to use the sword front derailer The Q's front trailer FYI does not play well with the sword shifter that's not really a big surprise like I mentioned in a previous video the cued front derailer has a different cable pull than other front railers um prior to it one thing to note is that the profile of the front is definitely shaped for a larger chain ring in this case a 4630 but I find that it actually shifts pretty well even in this kind of less than ideal situation so that just goes to show you you should experiment and see what actually works in real world I do really like the cable routing of the sword front trailer there's no like goofy plastic top cap like you see in in the newer Shimano Front Road railers for whatever reason uh just plain simple works great let's do a quick uh shift test here so far for the most part it's shifting uh pretty decently it's not as crisp as like a dedicated system but it's shifting well enough that I think I'm going to leave it on the bike and see how it does over a longer term so as it stands right now I'm dubbing this the sword Mano drivetrain just is like there's shimo this is aord Mano drivetrain still in beta I'm not suggesting that you run out and do this uh why would you run a q's rear trailer with the microshift uh brifter instead of just like their native brifter um I think for 99% of the people out there you should just do the micros shift shifter with their matching rear derailer but if you're a weirdo and you like really low gears really wide range doubles then something like the uh short mono drivetrain uh could be an option I'm not 100% vetting this yet I don't want to have to do another mopa video in a couple weeks this is just a beta I have to iron out some Kinks for the most part it seems to shift pretty well up until the eighth um Cog in the back the last three are H Miss sometimes it works perfect other times um not so good so I think that's where that the really small differ difference in cable pull ratio U manifests itself usually in the slowest gears so this this video took a lot of work uh hopefully it was insightful to help you guys out if you guys appreciate this video please consider supporting the channel by joining us on patreon or picking up some stickers we just bought some bulk housing you know we purchased a couple Q's uh rear derailers to make these videos happen so if you appreciate that you know you know what to do join us on patreon pick up a shirt and as always keep this uple side down

Channel: Path Less Pedaled

Views: 82,797

Keywords: bicycle touring, bikepacking, bicycle, travel, tourism, ride, adventure cycling, pathlesspedaled, the path less pedaled, bike touring, bikepacking gear, bike gearing, roadslikethese, gravelspecific, partypace, gravel bike

Id: qD7dCJ-cP_w

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024