!Help needed! Derailleur upgrade, Tiagra or 105?
 

Hi,

I've just got into road cycling and am loving it. I'm running a 2007 Lemond Etape 16 speed, with Tiagra rear derailleur and Sora front, with Sora STI's. However, and accident resulted in my front derailleur being ripped off and the back bent, and they need replacing. I am unsure whether to upgrade both to Tiagra for £40, or both to 105 for an extra £25. I'm looking to get out a lot during the summer, about 100-150km a week, and am looking at the possibility in the future of upgrade my cassette and STI's to either Tiagra or 105. What would you recommend? Any comments welcomed, I'm a tad bit out of my depth!

Thanks,

Rob

go with the derailers that you intend to eventually upgrade your entire drive train to.

I'm not sure but I think the Tiagra RD will work for ten speeds, though it would be a shame if you got it, upgraded to ten speeds, and then it wasn't compatible.

105 will be a bit better and lighter, but its up to you if you think it's worth it. From my experience, Tiagra works very well. However 105 (especially 5700) is suppose to work nearly as well as Ultegra and Dura Ace.

I'd bet that if you took the label off the two derailleurs you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

ptle - That's whats playing on my mind. The tiagra at the moment is only 9 speed, so if i bought that then wanted to upgrade to 10 speed in the future, i would have to splash out on another derailleur, so it might be best to take the cost now, just in case.

Does anyone have any experience if 10 speed gives a significantly better/easier ride than 8/9?

And jzsoup, I'd be willing to go with you on that one.

On my current bike I'm running with the 105's and triple up front. I find that most of the time on flats and rollers i'm shifting over a couple of gears at a time to get to the most comfortable gear so I probably use maybe half of the gearing combo's available if that. But with that said, I might not find those sweet spots running an 8 or 9 spd cassette so it is nice to have all the choices afforded with the 10spd rear.

Might as well go up to 105 10 speed. The Sora shifters are crap anyway, so if you're replacing both derailleurs, might as well go whole hog.

I'm thinking about putting on the 150 RD and Tiagra FD, so gives me the option of which STI's i upgrade to in the future. I would put new shifters on now, but can't quite afford it at the moment, but need the new derailleurs to get back out! Thanks for your help.

I would go 105. I actually run an Ultegra 6600 (10 speed) FD and RD with a 9 speed chain and Tiagra shifters, crank and cassette. The set up works MUCH better than my old Tiagra RD and Sora FD set up, even though it could be considered a 10 speed 9 speed mismatch. I would imagine the 105 would give you much the same experience I have had with the Ultegra, which is crisper shifting and little need for derailleur adjustment. This will give you the option of eventually upgrading everything to 10 speed (which I plan on doing after this season).

not really. the 8/9 speed chains actually last longer. save a bit more & get sram rival, it's much better than the *****mano junk (this coming from a former ultegra 6600 user) :p

SRAM Rival is da $hit.

I agree. I do really like my Rival. Never misses a shift, even under load.

Tiagra will work fine with 10 speed should you decide to upgrade later. The only Shimano derailer I've had trouble with is SORA rear derailer.

Yup and with the wide fd and trim, it's practically impossible to get chain chatter.

yeah, i was afraid i was gonna get a lot of rubbing, but it's fine down to my 34x13. OP, the other advantage with rival is that should you decide to get fancier stuff after rival, you can upgrade piecemeal and get all the benefits of other sram stuff, the most important of which is the rear shifting zero-loss that's available on sram red shifters

damn, i really drank down the sram koolaid

Same :D

but Force is the new Red, and much less than Red and not much more than Rival. Force is da bomb............

Whichever derailleur is purchased, make sure the rear hanger is properly aligned before installation. I have a hard time imagining that it's still straight.

All these responses are weird.

Last year I asked at 2 different bike shops about upgrading my Sora/Tiagra stuff to 105. They both said the same thing - you cannot mix and match 9 speed and 10 speed equipment. If you want to put 105 components on a bike with 9 speed, you would need to replace the shifters, derailler, chainring, chain, and cables. So - everything.

I dunno, but that's what 2 shops told me.

I've heard of people finding the old 9-speed 105 and Ultegra shifters on ebay and putting them on, but that's it.