Originally Posted by
joejack951
You've answered your own question. On lower end cranksets, it's not much of an advantage. About all it buys you is the ability to swap out the granny ring to customized the gearing a bit. If you need to swap the middle or outer it can often be cheaper to buy a new crankset. On a long tour it *might* come in handy as well if you damaged a ring and somehow had a source for just a replacement ring and not a full crank, or happened to be carrying one (I'm really grasping at straws here). On more expensive cranksets, you can easily justify the cost of replacement chainrings. I certainly wouldn't scrap either of my Stronglight cranks even if I had to replace all three rings.
Aren't Stronglight cranksets made by Sugino? Do you find they work well?
Originally Posted by
Mithrandir
Can't comment on XT. However I went from Alivio Crank+Derailleur to Deore LX Crank+Derailleur. Shifting is a thousand times better. I never miss a shift. With the Alivio it wouldn't even shift into the granny gear half the time (and yes I tried adjusting it, it just didn't work many times).
Deore LX, I've only adjusted it twice. Once when I first got it, and once when I swapped shifters, been perfect for every shift after each adjustment.
Yeah, but it would have been fun to see what the difference would be with the same front derailleur. I'm glad to see LX works so much better. For my touring bike which hasn't been built yet, I have Shimano STX-RC 8 speed shifters, a Shimano Exage ES front derailleur and Shimano Deore LX rear derailleur. I was told by the webmaster of a German site on the history of Shimano parts that the STX-RC shifters I got had some parts in them that were superior to Deore, only surpassed by XT. And my research shows the Exage ES FD-M520 is from 1994 and given that it's a 500 series part, I'm assuming it's Deore quality. I'm just hoping my Frankenbike will work well.
I also have a Shimano BB-UN54 bottom bracket, Sugino Impel 150x crankset, MKS GR-9 pedals, Shimano Tiagra rear hub, Shimano DH-2N70 front dynamo hub and Origin 8 sealed headset. Of course, these parts will be on my "crap" touring bike. My "dream" touring bike will have Ultegra 8 speed bar end shifters mounted on Paul Thumbies, Shimano Deore LX low-normal rear derailleur, Shimano Deore LX FD-M550 front derailleur, MKS Sylvan Touring pedals... (Actually, not even sure you even need LX quality for friction shifting, just that I wanted a low-normal RD for a reasonable price on eBay then I found the FD on sale again on eBay and it said the tension was user-adjustable so I decided why not?)
Originally Posted by
LesterOfPuppets
Just for fun I did a quick check for fancy cranksets. It was about $500 more than I expected! Eleven hundred something for Campy's fanciest!
I've seen seatposts that cost $200! I'm amazed someone in the long-distance forum said you can't easilly build a $10,000 bike. I've seen several thousand dollar frames and wheelsets. I'm pretty sure it can be done. Plus, I've seen Trek Madone road bikes on a Canadian website for $9,999 CAD.