Originally Posted by
Lenton58
Well if it has to be C&V, I'll have to skip out Nitto Technomic quill stems and Diacompe BRS-101 brakes. And, someone has already covered SunTour Accushift.
So my vote is the 6400 Tricolor group. (For heavens sake keep it a secret!) It's too bread and butter for a lot of Euro-enthusiasts, and there are no shi-shi points in the offering. But, it's solid metallurgy, elegant, well engineered, in the ball park of the lighter racing gear and has the trickle-down pedigree from Dura Ace but at a galactically cheaper price. And it works!
I wouldn't call tricolor underrated. It may not have the resale of Campagnolo or dura ace, but it is rare to find someone say anything negative about it. It may be under valued, but not under rated. I think rx100 is where underrated comes in. I don't know if many realize it is basically a better looking version of 105 wich also functions like dura ace.
Originally Posted by
thinktubes
Not surprised by the mentions of the "lower" tier Simano stuff (including the light-action).
Didn't give up much in the performance dept. to the higher end stuff. Only a small weight penalty as well.
Shimano should be credited with giving consumer a modest bike that didn't have to have utter crap on it.
shimano did bring great groups to the common man but once Campagnolo went 10, they stole the show. Campagnolo went all in with 10spd when shimano was still making 8spd on the low end. Not only that, but pre "escape/power shift", their low end levers had the same basic internals as record, the full line was compatible, looked identical from more than 5ft, and used the same ergonomics.
after sti became the norm, I feel lower end shimano groups lost some of their appeal. 105 has been consistently good, but under that it gets hit or miss. I recently worked on older tiagra and it left me missing rx100. It isn't "utter crap", but the gap from low end to high end grew. It look like electronic may close that gap again (for better or worse)