Hey everyone, welcome to the channel!
Both SRAM and Shimano provide us with cheaper drivetrains to be installed on a more budget-oriented bike.
What's common between them is this: the use, or reuse of the good old Shimano splined freehub body
that we've been using since the 80s.
This allows us to reuse existing wheels, upgrade older bikes,
but SRAM and Shimano have different approaches to this.
SRAM is giving us a couple of options for drivetrains: one is the Eagle SX and the second one is the Eagle NX.
Both of these being 12-speed drivetrains that are cheap and they make it onto a lot of bikes today.
Shimano approach though is different.
They introduced this: an 11 speed M5100 drivetrain that comes with a cassette, derailleur and the shifter.
I covered the entry-level M5100 crankset in a recent video but today we're going to be looking at this,
the 11 speed 10-51T cassette!
With the previous generation Shimano gave us this 11-46 tooth cassette available for XT and SLX
but their Deore was a 10 speed that didn't provide as much range.
In this generation Deore comes with a 1x12 drivetrain but they also provide us with 1x11 and 2x11
and also a more entry-level 1x10 and 2x10 .
More importantly for our discussion today it's going to be this, the 11-51T cassette
because many of us will probably be interested in using this as an upgrade.
I looked at the Deore 12-speed cassette in a previous video
but because these two are part of the new Deore generation
I thought I would look at the 11 speed M5100 right next to it.
And as you saw in the flow chart the M6100 is a 12 speed cassette, 10-51 is the range,
M5100 it's an 11 speed and you have two options with the 11-51T being the most popular.
They're both built with an aluminum spider but most importantly here, on the M6100, the 10 to 51T
you're required the use of the Micro Spline that may or may not be available from your hub manufacturer
and that's why both Shimano and SRAM wanted to offer options for the good old splined Shimano freehub.
On top of that 5100 requires the use of a regular 11 speed chain.
That is not true for the 12 speed that requires that Hyperglide+.
I actually have a video talk about chairings and compatibility you might want to check that out.
And that chainring compatibility comes down to the use of the Shimano proprietary 12 speed Hyperglide+ chain,
something that Deore 11 speed M5100 doesn't have a problem with.
This is compatible with any chainring that you might have from 9 speed onwards.
So the M5100 can be a better and cheaper option for an upgrade
and by the way this is made in Japan just like all the 12 speed components of the current generation.
In the box these days you don't get a lot of literature you get a QR code sending you to their website.
And here's our 11 to 51 tooth cassette!
Because of the 10 versus the 11 tooth smallest cog this M6100 cassette has 510% percent gear range
The 5100 is at 465%
I reviewed the SunRise cassette which was 12 speed that would connect to the same type of freehub body.
That one is 465% as well.
Otherwise the biggest cog here obviously is the same size on both cassettes
and not only identical in size but also if you look here at the shift ramps between the two largest cogs
they look identical to me, hard to tell if the cogs are different thickness or not.
The extra gear range of the M6100 comes from the use of that 10-tooth cog.
that is only possible because of the new Micro Spline freehub.
Here on the lock ring you're gonna see the torque for installing this, 40 Nm, the usual for Shimano,
then you're gonna see that this is the CS-M5100, made in Japan.
On the back of the cassette, the aluminum spider and lots and lots and lots of rivets keeping this together
On the 6100 so the 12 speed you're gonna have the identification of the cassette right there M6100, Japan.
For 5100 you're not gonna find any sort of identification of the cassette aside from the lock ring that you just saw.
The 12 speed has the majority of the cogs connected to that aluminum spider
with the last 5 cogs here being loose.
M5100 uses a similar construction in which the last one, two, three, four, five, and six clogs are loose
and you're gonna have a couple of spacers in between you see them over there.
Usually you would want the least amount of loose cogs on a cassette
because they tend to bite on the frehub body, especially the aluminum ones.
However this is not uncommon for the cheaper options from Shimano.
The installation of the cassette is fairly simple:
use this tube as a guide, find the biggest spline here on the frihub body
and then you remove this little tag
and as you do that you can actually slide the cassette on to the freehub body.
You can do this with all the cogs as you see it here, all the way to that last one which is here at the top of the tube.
And then you're gonna use the steel lock ring to tighten everything up.
The recommended torque is 40 Nm.
Previous generation 11 speed cassettes with one or two aluminum cogs were in that 470 grams range.
But the new Deore11-51T, all steel, comes up to 620 grams, so that's 150 grams heavier.
That might not be the end of the world for a hardtail
however you got to keep that weight in mind. It's not just the weight of the bike
it is the inertia of the cassette while rotating, so that would be a downside of this kind of weight for a cassette.
Another possible downside to a big range cassette like this is that it doesn't really work with the previous 11 speed derailleurs.
These were able to swallow an 11 to 46 tooth cassette no problem, however 51T is quite a bit bigger and would require a new derailleur.
And one last possible downside of the M5100 is that as you see here in the specs it doesn't really use what's called the Hyperglide+
something that was introduced with the shimano 12 speed
and that is the ability of that proprietary chain to move smoother from the larger cogs to the smaller cogs.
So no Hyperglide+ or Linkglide, the new technologies from SHimano
but what would be some of the advatages of using something like this?
I would say first of all is price, availability, range, and the compatibility with the older wheelsets.
No need for a special chain and overall a very tempting cassette for an upgrade
with the new derailleur and and M5100 shifter that I'm going to cover in part 3 of this mini series.
So what do you guys think about the M5100 cassette?
What about the M5100 11 speed drivetrain?
Why not Deore 12 speed?
Let me know in the comments below.
Also let me know if you found this useful and if you did don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment,
and until next time hope to see you on the trails.
Cheers guys, cheers!