Flash

I highly doubt that when the Shimano engineers were designing Alivio they sat around a table and said: "let's design a component group that will suck and that riders will spurn in favor of our higher-level offerings"

however, we see daily how alivio and other lower-level component groups are regularly dismissed on this and other boards e.g.:

-- "nice bike but stay away from alivio"
-- "upgrade immediately, alivio is trash"

etc

This makes me wonder how bad Alivio and other budget component groups really are. I rode Tiagra/Deore for five years on a daily commute, left the bike out in the rain and snow all the time, never cleaned the mud off it etc. and never adjusted anything. It just kept on chugging.

I've never owned a bike with Alivio. I'm curious if anyone can provide real-world data on how Alivio performs over time and whether it's as bad as people seem to think.

Let me also throw this out there: is it possible that rider weight has something to do with component lifespan e.g. do heavier riders place more stress on components relative to lighter riders, leading to shorter lifespan for component groups ridden by the bigger guys.

thanks