Hey everyone welcome!
As I mentioned in my previous videos Shimano is planning to put these new Shimano CUES drivetrains
in pretty much 20% of the bikes next year.
Chances are these are going to make it onto our mountain bikes so today
I'm going to continue my mini-series and talk about the shifting bits.
That is the shifter and derailleur, let's get to it!
The new CUES drivetrains are upposed to replace all the Altus, Alivio, Acera
as well as the Deore 10 and 11 speed drivetrains as we know them today,
and if their cranks or compatible with any 9, 10, 11 speed in the market today from Shimano or SRAM
also the cassette is somewhat compatible with some driivetrains, more about this compatibility in a separate video,
when it comes to the shifting bits, these are completely new and actually they're not backwards compatible
with pretty much anything we have today.
But one thing that I want you you guys to remember throughout this video is this:
and what I'm pointing at is Linkglide, that is the tech that was used when designing the CUES drivetrains
which means that pretty much anything that has CUES on it
is compatible with the Deore 10 speed and the XT 11 speed Linkglide groupsets.
They were launched a couple of years ago during the pandemic, nobody really had access to them,
they were groupsets designed for e-Bikes.
Well, these days CUES is for pretty much any bike that's in that mid price level of the marketplace.
The CUES shifter and derailleur, they are not compatible with any of the drivetrains that they replace
however these two parts are cross compatible with any other CUES components
and I would expand that to say Linkglide components.
If we take the shifter for in instance, this is the U6000 11 speed, but you can make this work on 10 speed and 9 speed,
it provides the same pull ratio, pretty much the same features, the only difference between them being the number of clicks.
When it comes to the deraileurs, yes these will work with pretty much any CUES derailleurs or Linkglide drivetrains
but when you're mixing and matching you got to keep in mind that the derailleurs vary quite a bit in the CUES lineup
depending on whether they're built for 1x or 2x
and whether they are for 9, 10, and 11 speed.
So are you guys confused already? Let me know in the comments below.
In the meantime why don't we take a closer look at the build of the shifter and the derailer this is again the U6000
and I want to remind you what these products are supposed to replace.
Again, we're talking about Deore 10 & 11 speed and below.
And you could argue that Shimano wanted to make a statement with these groupsets
as the finish of the product are no worse than the previous Deore 10-11 speed.
If anything they look slightly better, with the cassette looking significantly better
with this darker finish or coating that they applied on the bare metal.
Going back to our shifter, this is only available in the bar clamp version
and interestingly if you look on that list you're going to see that they exist in I-SPEC II as well
which is an older standard and not I-SPEC EV that you would expect to see today.
Mind you, with the new CUES drivetrains Shimano did not introduce new brakes,
so they are reusing the MT400 and the MT500 series brakes that they already have.
That might be the reason why they only provide the I-SPEC II and bar clamp.
It's only the U8000, the trekking groupset that provides us with CUES brakes.
You see that trekking lever that comes with I-SPEC II as well
and if you look at the calipers, both 2 and 4-piston calipers seem to be rebadged SLX or XT calipers.
Back to our shifter where you're going to see the Linkglide logo
meaning that this is compatible with any Linkglide component.
You see the barrel adjuster over here, up front you're going to see that this is the 11speed version of this shifter.
Shifter is part of the U6000, is made in Indonesia, you see 22.2
that refers to the diameter, the standard diameter of the bar clamp.
The construction looks pretty standard, definitely in line with that M5100 Deore
and if you look at the paddles, they are smooth, they do not provide any sort of grooves like you see on these more exessive shifters in their lineup.
And if we look at the features provided by this particular model
you're going to see that one of them is what's called Rapidfire Plus
and that's the ability of a shifter like this to shift multiple gears at a time.
As you can see this provides you with only two in comparison an XT 12 speed that will give you up to four - 1,2,3,4, I missed one
but remember this is pretty much e-Bike technology
and they usually don't like you to just grab a whole bunch of gears all at once, so 2 is all you get!
The second feature embedded in here is well it's called 2-way Release
and that's the ability to shift gears with your thumb
or it provides you the ability to pull to shift onto the harder gear.
So that's the reason why sometimes these are called triggers,
I have an older video about this I'm going to make sure to link it up in the corner.
And that's pretty much all you need to know about these shifters time to move our attention to the derailleurs.
Shimano CUES gives us this 11-50T cassette that is slightly smaller than the 11-51T that we saw with the M5100, the Deore.
That kind of tells me that the derailleurs must be similar
so I have the M5100 here right next to our CUES.
And at the first glance the 2 derailleurs look identical, Deore on the right, CUES on the left.
They both have a clutch that is not adjustable from the outside.
On the CUES you see the Linkglide logo, that obviously doesn't exist on the M5100.
You have the lever right here for your clutch engagement.
This particular U6000 does have a clutch, and I assume is absolutely identical with this.
Remember the U6000, this is a 1x10 or 1X 11 derailleur.
You have Deore branding right in here
and if you look carefully this section here is where the two derailleurs start to differ a little bit.
It's the shape here and the fact that at the very end, where the cable connects
you do have a barrel adjuster on the Shimano CUES, you do not have that on the Deore.
Mind you, something like this you're going to find on drop bar bikes
you can see here on my GRX 11 speed, you have that barrel adjuster
and you also have that large cable loop that it's encouraged by the position of this entry point here in the derailleur.
Identical jockey wheels, these are 13T both the top and the bottom one
none of these use bearings, they use bushings.
That inner cage is slightly different shape,
on the M5100 this definitely prioritizes protection making sure that nothing gets trapped between the chain and the jockey.
If you look here on the CUES this seems to prioritize scraping off the dirt from the jockey wheel.
Made in Japan and it is an SGS, so a long cage derailleur.
I don't see that anywhere here at the back of the CUES.
Identif ification of the derailleur is right in here, the U6000.
M5100 only had that 11-51 tooth cassette to worry about,
so you see the B-gap adjustment line right here clearly stating 51T
As opposed to that, Shimano CUES can work with 11-50T and also with 11-48T
but don't be fooled, all the other CUES cassettes, the 11-39T, 11-43T, 11-46 or 48T,
they're all going to work with the same derailleur.
Because they have to swallow pretty much the same range cassette
you have the same offset here on the top jockey wheel and that is 4.5 cm
and if you're wondering about the length of the cage, that is 9.5 cm
Again, those are identical dimensions on both of these derailleurs
and yes, if you remember, this derailleur cage seems to be bent and twisted.
The CUES cage is no different, I have a video I'm going to link it up in the corner,
it's actually pretty interesting to see the reasons why they've done that .
The only other difference here in the back is this, what looks like a nut on the M5100,
it turned into a rivet on the CUES, I assume that is just to save cost and this might might become a bit sloppier in time.
But what about the weight of these derailleurs? Is that pretty much the same?
And here's the CUES coming up to 378 g, M5100 is 356 g,
so again it can be from the materials used on the CUES,
this is supposed to be a cheaper overall groupset compared to the outgoing Deore.
If you were wondering about the shifter, here go, 137 g.
But despite the fact that the two derailleurs are almost identical,
remember the CUES and the M5100 are not compatible with each other
that is because of the different pull ratio of the new CUES shifters
that was required by the new groupsets, or that's what Shimano says.
Compatibility - I think I'm going to have to do another video because this one is getting too long already.
What do you guys think about these new products? If you ask me they look pretty neat, they are cheaper than before
and they should perform quite okay.
The fact that you have the barrel adjuster here kind of tells me that they're going to use this derailleur for other drop bar drivetrains
but we don't know yet when those are going to come out, looking forward to it.
What do you guys think about the video? What do you think about the products?
Let me know in the comments below,
if you like the video don't forget to like, subscribe and comment,
and until next time, hope to see you folks on the trails.
Cheers guys, cheers!