Why is No One Talking About this Drivetrain?

what if I told you that there's a drivetrain out there with more range than sham Eagles 52% more range than rolloffs 5 126% and even more range than pinion 636 per. also it doesn't have 14 speeds it's not electronic there's no need to use goat links or friction shifting hacks or anything like that and it's also made by a reputable brand that you know you'd probably say Russ what are you smoking if someone actually did this they'd be telling everybody it'd be in press releases they tout it as one of their key features putting it in their top-of-the-line drivetrain and probably charging a lot of money you'd think that but in this case no in my previous rant video I personally like to think of them more as video essays now I lamented the ever addition of Gears with no increase in range it's like being sold the same size pizza for more money and all they're doing is just cutting the slices smaller in this video we're going to talk about the opposite we're going to talk about a drivetrain that has more range and costs less to carry the pizza analogy forward it's like getting a larger size pizza the only catches that it has fewer slices what is this goat this unicorn mythical drive train well it's been behind us all along it's our good old friend Q's the funny thing is this drivetrain is so lowkey I've had it on this bike in the house for the last couple weeks and I didn't realize how awesome it was until just like like recently I'm testing out the Panorama Cycles Boreal and they offer it in a 2 by Q's build which is super interesting so what's unique about this build is that it combines a cu's to buy in my case a 4026 um and their stock offerings it's a 3622 I believe and they pair that with a massive 11 to 45 in the rear and it all shifts to I had to check the build sheet a couple times to make sure that was going on because this seems like amazing and no one's really talking about the potential of a 2 by Q's drivetrain everyone thinks of Q's only as a one by drivetrain so this combo is pretty much flown under everybody's radar but when you do the math it's quite literally the Wiest range index modern drivetrain that you can buy readily available today so the first thing I thought is like why is Shimano not you know making this more of a thing it actually seems like they do more interesting things on their lower spec components and a lot of mainstream sites just overlook this okay enough faffing about let's look into numbers and why I think this is pretty unique uh so first off is the crank set u it's a twox version you can get them in various flavors the one I have is a 4026 and that that yields a gear range of 105 on the highend to 16.4 on the low end the one that's listed on the Panorama website for their builds uh uses the 3622 and that yields you a 94.7 high gear and a absurdly low 13 8 low gear this is gear inches by the way not meters development I don't like ratios so those crank sets I price them out you can get for about 28 which is pretty dang good in terms of the rear derailer you want to get the 11speed I believe the model number is at 8020 it has longer cage when compared to the 6000 series that'll set you back about 75 probably the most expensive thing um in this drivetrain you can get a pair of shifters for about 48 that's front in rear if you're not getting the the total baller ones the cassette is an 1145 link alide I saw those online for about 48 and of course you'll need a chain um shiman recommend an 11speed chain that's about 15 depending on where or what you buy all in you're looking at a whopping €98 for the widest range indexing modern uh drivetrain on the market that's pretty dang impressive so to put this a little bit more in perspective that drivetrain costs less than one grx di2 rear derailer for the cost of the top-of-the-line sham Eagle te transmission rear derailer you could get three of these for the cost of the rolloff Hub and not including the shifter and all the other bits you could get five of these Drive trains and for the cost of the Top ofthe Line pinion which probably comes closest in terms of gear range you'd have to buy 10 of these and that's just for the gearbox doesn't count the shifter and all those other things so if this isn't the best deal for a true like adventure bike packing low gear range drivetrain then I just I don't know what it is so how does it perform I took it on the mini tour this past weekend and it performed great I'm not going to do a full review on it here I'm going to include those thoughts when I actually review the bike but but generally speaking no complaints I think I did the entire trip without ever leaving the big ring uh as it were shifting into the easier gears is fast and snappy going into the harder gears depending on where you are in the rear cassette they can be a little bit slow when you're on the big cogs on the rear cassette but as you go to the smaller cogs the shifting into a harder gear gets a lot snappier I think the shifting performance is perfectly acceptable for anyone that isn't a snob or needs to attack someone on a ride in addition to the q's Tu by uh SRAM also released the Essa rear derailer which is another kind of lowkey cool kn talking about rear derailer except for the folks at rivendel bikes full credit they're the ones that pointed this out what's unique about the Essa is that it's a wide range one by stated capacity is 45 teeth so that means you can probably push it to 46 to 48 maybe 50 that might be stretching it a bit much but it uses the older cable pull of eight and NP speed so that practically speaking that means you could run a wide range one by using old 9-speed compatible friction shifters or if you want to get really spicy you could combine it with older eight and nine-speed uh brifters that that would be pretty interesting pretty cool but again barely a peep from Shimano or other bike media where does that leave us we've got an amazing wide range drivetrain for Shimano in the form of Q's 2 by quite literally probably the widest range uh modern drivetrain out there on the market today all it's missing are some Road shifters uh I did some early experiment ation with q's and microshift and it's pretty close I think I can make it happen it worked really well on the stand but was a little bit laggy on the road under certain circumstances but I feel like there's a couple things I could tweak and it just might work seeing how massive arrange we can get with a 2 by Q's I'm I'm a little bit more motivated in trying to figure out how to make it work there there are a few things I could do to improve the shift quality experimenting with different chains uh different cassettes but honestly this is where I need your help I love doing these hack videos I feel like they're fun and informative and give real value where you know other sites aren't looking but the truth is buying parts for these hack videos is really expensive especially relative to the income that AdSense generates so for example I'd probably have to spend about 300 you know Euros worth of components and if the video does about average I'd make $100 back so you can see it's not financially viable and what probably why a lot of people don't make those kinds of videos so so here's the pitch if you want to see more experimentation on drop bar q's and other wide range index all mechanical drivetrains uh I want to start a new series called Peak mechanic where we'll try different combinations and say for sure whether they work or not but it's going to take your support so please join us on patreon that's the best way to do it pick up some merch or you can do a super chat venmo PayPal whatever put put a note that you want it to go towards Peak mechanical and I'll and I'll earmark that for this project videos like this there's no way chano is going to approve of it or or fund it uh so we've got to do it by ourselves and it and it costs money guys so you know what to do as always keep the Supple side down

Channel: Path Less Pedaled

Views: 76,152

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: ccqq3RMWres

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2024