luevelvet

seypat

What should we be talking about?

noodle soup

SRAM sucks for many reasons, but offering a 1x road groupset isn't one of them.

luevelvet

seypat

I have no experience with SRAM. But, I was on an organized ride with another rider 4 or 5 years ago. He had a new bike with SRAM. The FD would not shift onto to small ring. At the first SAG the mech support took a look at it. The rest of the ride was mostly climbing. The mechanic said it was a common problem with that SRAM group. He got it onto the small ring and told the other rider to leave it there. He also told him to switch out the SRAM to another brand.

noodle soup

here's just a few of their issues

Poor shifting front derailleurs
A long history of hydraulic brake problems
Sleeping eTap derailleurs
Plastic threads on derailleur limit screws

Bah Humbug

You forgot "front shift levers that just fall apart in your hand".

Of course Shimano has a decent list as well.

aclinjury

The 3T frame was designed for use with Sram 1x. Aqua Blue at the time (2017) was committed to this frame and setup. So, this setup HAD to be able to work in every situation that racing demanded. There was no choice to run a double.
As for your comment about them not running "optimal choices for their equipment". Sounds like complete armchair comemnt. Do you expect us to believe that a team at this level doesn't know how to pick equipment? Even a Cat5 guy know what equipment he'll need for a course. The problem with Aqua was that they were limited in what their sponsors gave them.
Fast forward to today... how many road pro teams are running 1x? None. That should be enough evidence about 1x effectiveness for pro racing.

However, for the amateur Fred, 1x setup is fine. Fred isn't gonna be too concerned about dropping a chain every now and then and he isn't gonna be too picky about the gear jump between cassettes either.

luevelvet

noodle soup

Shimano shifters eat cables, sure. That's an issue with the past 2 generations of Dura-Ace/Ultegra/105, but its an easy fix

aclinjury

I know meant to say you couldn't care less. But for a pro team striving to win, they care a bit more than you.
In the meantime, look at all those pro teams flocking to 1x eh?? Enuff of the silly armchair hypothesis man.

luevelvet

I never once said the teams or the pros didn't care. Of course they cared as what they had didn't work for them and they were vocal about it. I was just saying that it's not SRAM's fault (or Shimano if they tried a 1x setup with their stuff) since it was something that could have easily been avoided, right? I guess it all comes down to who made the choice to go 1x for the whole team. Did folks at SRAM insist their 1x setups be on their bikes or was it 3T or the mechanics or maybe the riders thought they would take a chance and try it out? I understand there's a lot that none of us know about the situation but to say SRAM sucks because one team tried to exclusively use a 1x setup is disingenuous. I'm not going to blame Nike if I wear their running shoes on a tennis court in a pro tennis match. Wrong gear for the job IMO but it doesn't mean the company making that gear is awful.

At any rate, it really doesn't matter since that team doesn't even exist any more and it's obvious that 1x's aren't great for the vast majority of pro races.

seypat

I know on the pro golf tours, the players generally play the equipment of the companies that pay them the most coin. That has ruined/caused problems with many a player's career through the years. I caddied some in the past. I have eye witnessed a player missing the cut because of equipment choices. One player I caddied for was endorsing a company's driver, putter and ball. The endorsement gave him enough seed money each week to pay for his expenses and enter the tournament. In the practice rounds on Monday-Wed he would hit the company's driver as well as another company's driver on the range. He played the practice rounds with the other driver because he was a lot more consistent with it. On Thursday when the Darrell Equipment Survey is taken,(survey of the equipment in each player's bag) The endorsing driver was in the bag for that round. He hit 2 balls out of bounds that round which cost him 2-4 strokes. On Friday, the other driver was back in the bag. He missed the cut by a stroke. Another player I caddied for was Company X throughout the bag including the ball. We are playing a practice round on Wednesday with 2 others. He was talking about how much better he hits one of the other player's brand of driver. He said downwind it wasn't even close. He couldn't only switch out 1 club and that was the putter. He also liked the driver brand of the 3rd player in the group better than the one he was playing.

Back before the equipment companies started paying huge endorsement deals, one brand won the iron count every year. If a player loses his endorsement deals and doesn't have any, you will generally see that brand of iron in their bag. That is the real indication of the quality of the brand.

Bah Humbug

And the R9000 cassette issue, and the snapping crankarms, and some other things I can't remember off the top of my head. I still run Shimano, but they aren't close to flawless.

Maelochs

The point of this thread was that one guy running a certain style of race finds that a 1x set-up works for him. he didn't win, but he was in contention to the very end---and as we all know, the gear isn't going to give a rider a win. Anyone who can hang with the lead group in a monument until the last several kms has good enough gear to win. it is all rider from there.

AquaBlue tried 1x on multi-day stage races (I assume the got a ton of sponsorship assistance for being guinea pigs) and found that the system did Not keep them in contention on a lot of the stages. Totally unrelated to what the other guy is doing. Right gear for the course versus wrong gear for the course.

None of this has anything to do with the quality of SRAM or Shimano. It has to do with a couple specific applications of a specific gearing system.

And certainly none of this has to do with the equipment the World Tour tams are using. I am pretty sure their stuff works or they would be getting different stuff. Aqua Blue was a pro-continental team which probably got a boost from SRAM for testing the gear, but most teams at that level or higher need every penny, which means they need god performance, which means they would get working gear. AquaBlue was getting some of its money from using the unsuitable gear so they could afford not to show performance for a season... the stipend made up for it.

And after that test, the dropped the crap. SRAM wasn't getting good publicity, and AqyuBlue wasn't getting good results.

None of this has much to do with the quality of the general ranger of parts produced by SRAM or Shimano.

noodle soup

That's what I said in my first post.

Leinster

Maelochs

Dude, at my age I am pleased if I remember what was in the start of the post I am typing ... forget a bout the OP in a thread two dozen posts long! Sorry to repeat your OP ... i guess I can at least say that I agree with you, then.