Hey everyone, exciting times here.
I finally got all the parts to do an upgrade on my drivetrain.
I'm upgrading to a GX Eagle 12 speed from SRAM,
you can see the cassette here, the rear derailleur.
I'm going to be using this with the 32T oval from OneUp.
An X01 shifter, and the chain happened to be X01 as well
since I couldn't get a GX.
What I'm upgrading from is an 11 speed drivetrain.
This Trek came with SRAM X1 11 speed,
the only think that I change was the chainring,
this is an oval from absoluteBlack,
it is a 30 tooth, so right now I have a 30T to 10-42T cassette
which is a great drivetrain for most of my riding.
However for my failing knees, I felt the
need to add a climbing gear, a granny gear and if you've checked my video on
this specific cassette, the Eagle cassette, you know already that what it
is is pretty much that cassette you see behind over there, with the added 50 tooth
sprocket. While you can still get extended range with an 11 speed
drivetrain today, just by replacing your cassette, adding extended cogs to it and
things like that, this is still 1x drivetrain version 1.0. Eagle promises to
be a system that was built from the ground up to be a 1x drivetrain and
all components should be optimized. Going to the chain this is optimized for low
friction and smooth shifting and it doesn't take into account the use of a
front derailleur anymore. If SRAM sold me on the promise of a quieter drivetrain
that lasts longer, an extended range, my current champion when it comes to
performance it's gotta be this XTR shifter, 32 oval
from OneUp coupled with an 11-42 cassette from Shimano and an XT GS
rear mech. This is butter smooth I absolutely love this drivetrain, it's
quiet, it works perfectly fine and if you don't need more range I would
strongly recommend something like this. Even though I had the GX shifter as well
I decided to go with the X01 and if you watch my video comparison you know
that I preferred the feel of the X01 plus I use this recipe in the past with
success. I'm gonna be replacing the shifter housing and cable with the
Shimano MTB, this is the SP41 housing that is one of the best out there.
This is also a perfect time to analyze the chainring size, my 30 tooth with 10-42t is a
very good match, you can see very little wear here on the 10 and 12 tooth
sprockets only because most of the time my chain is right here in the middle of
the cassette and that's what you want to see. However for an upgrade like this is
not uncommon to recommend going up a couple of teeth on the chainring. In my
case I'm gonna go up to a 32 tooth chainring. Without getting into too many
details the reason why I can use this regular chainring with the 12 speed
chain is because this is just a bit narrower compared to a 10 or 11 speed
chain otherwise the internal dimensions between the links is the same
so this would work just fine with 10-11-12 speed drivetrains.
First thing in this upgrade I'm gonna remove the 11 speed chain which I cannot reuse and
replace the housing like I mentioned, also I'm gonna install the 32 tooth
chainring. I've already done a video on how to service these cranks, just use the
link on the screen to see the details on how to do that.
I just plainly cut the cable at the end and then replace all the housing so I have good housing going
through my frame right now which is great, have the new chainring already
installed and I removed the derailleur, the X1. I wish I could say that at this point
if you're shifting was nice and smooth before, you didn't have any indexing
problems, your derailleur hanger is fine but I would be wrong if I said that!
If you were to do any work on the rear derailleur I would highly recommend
getting one of these tools, either buy one for yourself or rent one from
your a local bike shop. This just helps you
align your derailleur hanger with the frame and I thought in mine was perfect
but guess what, after using this, and to use it's fairly simple, you just
use it up-down left-right. I noticed that mine
was off by a mile on the vertical plane. Now with my derailleur hanger perfectly
fine next thing I'm gonna do is replace the cassette with a 12 speed Eagle.
You pretty much need two tools, one is a chain whip, one is a cassette tool. In
this case I need both... this was really really tight. With the XD driver nicely
cleaned up, apply a bit of grease, I applied here on the bearing right up top
also down there on the spline and yes there is a little bit of grease
that I've already applied on the threads but if you look at the cassette you're
gonna see that there is already grease on the threads and right up top there
where it touches the bearing. So just put it on by hand and all you need to
tighten this up is gonna be your cassette tool and the torque for this one is 40 Nm.
Next I'm gonna install the rear derailleur,
by the way this is a 5 mm Hex. So you have this tab that has to sit
right against that stop over there. It already has some sort of a Loctite
over here, they specifically recommend not to put grease on that bolt. Start
to tighten it up, just push it down to make sure that your tab is right against
the stop and this is a 10 to 12 Nm. torque.
I did read a little bit about this derailleur having a tiny bit of play in it, there is a bit of a
left-to-right swing, we'll see how it goes
Next thing I'm gonna do with the 3mm Allen key. I'm just going to adjust
the stops for the derailleur. Right now you can see it here, is way out of whack.
So the one on the inside, towards the cassette that's the high. The trick here
looking from behind, you're trying to align the middle of
your top jockey wheel which is right there with the outer edge of your
10 tooth cog. Now using the other adjustment screw
which is the low limit screw I'm gonna try to roughly get an idea of how far up...
See this is almost going into the spokes so I got to give it some, few turns at least.
Measuring the chain should be fairly simple, so put the chain on your chain
ring, wrap it around your largest cog and then you add 4 links if you have a hardtail.
This is a full suspension, in this case I should add 2 links, one inner
one outer, however there's a catch: I got to make sure that the suspension
is at the point where I have the longest distance between my bottom bracket (BB) and
my real axle. I just picked two solid points. That's my thru axle in the rear.
This is my crank axle so I have 16 1/2 inches or exactly 42 cm.
Suspension fully compressed, I have over 17 inches or about 44 cm.
If you didn't know about the dimensions, the chain would look just
like a normal chain however what's different here is the
PowerLock. You can see them here with that kidney shape and they do have an arrow on them as well.
Remember if you have an oval you have to have this crank
at one o'clock. Doesn't make a huge difference but it does stretch your chain
a little bit. And then you do end to end, would be right here at this link plus
one outer, one inner link, so I bring it all the way down here and I have to make
sure that that's an inner link, this is an inner link because they will be
interconnected by the PowerLock .
Just out of curiosity with my suspension fully extended
if you look here at my chain, if I've picked end-to-end plus 4 links
1 2 3 4, I would have ended up with pretty much the same chain length so
you might want to use that as a shortcut.
Time to route it through the rear derailleur
remember there is no tension here so this is aligned with the 10t
cog, so put the chain over there, grab the end
of it and push it here between that tab and the top jockey, just around
the bottom one and here it is.
Working here below the chainstay, this is the
orientation of your kidney-shaped PowerLock. Connect the two parts together and
as you pull on the two ends you will probably get it only halfway engaged.
To fully engage it, move the chain or the PowerLock above the chainstay,
and with a rear brake engaged just push hard on your crank. You know that the
PowerLock is installed correctly if the arrow points to the chainring in
the direction of the movement for normal pedaling.
One day later finally getting
to install the shifter. And this is the bar clamp that it comes with which seems
to be identical to what I have right now for the X1 11 speed. I'm gonna reuse that
one because this being one piece I have to remove my brake and my grips and this
is foam so I can't really remove that easily. That's a 4 mm Allen key
Definitely put a little bit of Loctite on the thread before you install it
And the barrel adjuster, screw it in all the
way and then go back 2 full turns so three four five six seven, so eight
clicks that gives you a bit of flexibility in adjusting the indexing
afterwards. Push the inner cable through your housing and as it feeds
right here at the back of the rear derailleur it's gonna have to come down
and then here on that little channel. There is a loop over there make sure you
feed your cable through it. And I found that locking the cage was
the easiest way to do that anyway. Then you have a 4 mm here
undo that and you have this pinch bolt, it's actually pretty neat
there is a channel in there that would allow you to run your cable underneath.
So put a bit of tension on this just to make sure they pick up all the slack
from the cable, and as you keep that a little bit of tension on it just tighten it.
This is about 4 Nm.
Let's see it. It needs a bit more tension
in that housing
not too too bad. So with the chain on the biggest cog, the 12 speed derailleurs
provide this, just a tool that will help you to set up that 15 millimeter distance
here between the top pulley and the bottom of the cassette. SRAM recommends
to adjust this under sag. Clockwise to give you bigger distance between the top
jockey and the cassette and counterclockwise if you want to bring it
closer. On the stand here what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna bring this a bit
closer up because what happens is, as you're sitting on the bike and the
suspension compresses, look at that bottom jockey, you see, it just goes
further away from your big cog.
If you have to adjust your indexing, your gear
indexing, it's easily done here using the barrel adjuster. So lazy up shifts do
this, so counter clockwise. Don't do more than a couple of clicks at a time.
Lazy down shifts, so smaller cogs just turn it clockwise. Again a couple of clicks would be good enough.
Now that I know that my cable is fine, long enough, I'm just gonna
put a fancy cable tip over here. I'll double-check the indexing on the gears
and this baby should be good to go for a ride.
One thing I can tell you right away is that I really like the shifter.
Some of you ask me about this, the chain getting
out of sync with a narrow-wide profile of the 50 tooth, actually 42 is the same
you can see it right here. After riding this a little bit and trying things out
it has to be just B-gap or B-screw adjustment specific
You see it here working better...you still get this occasional situation.
Keep in mind this is on the stand and that's the clank when it just goes the way it was supposed to.
I first took the bike out to the local trails, I did about an
hour and a half of riding, really liked it.
Today I took it to an Enduro, that was
a 40k race and man, did I use that range!
I didn't think about having 12 gears instead of 11, I did use the whole cassette.
Derailleur, even though I showed you that it has a little bit of play here behaved very nicely
so no miss shifts, no issue with the chain floating on top of the cassette
over here, no issue whatsoever, so I think this is a really sensitive to that B-gap
so make sure you adjust it like SRAM suggests, under sag.
Clearance here is about 5 1/2 inches (14cm) in my case for 29er, derailleur is nicely tucked in
so hopefully I'm not gonna replace too many of them or too often and other than
that, the shifter worked really well. I think this is getting very close
to a Shimano type of shifting so very smooth, this wasn't too slippery, I ride
with gloves so this was good for me, didn't have issues with that. But really
smooth shifting precise, aside from the fact that I can't really shift up two
gears at once, this comes very close to an XT or XTR.
I really love this bike with that type of range. I think I'm gonna stick with this drivetrain for a while.
And that's all the story about upgrading to 12 speed guys, if you
have any questions let me know in the section below, don't forget to like the
video, keep an eye on my channel and social media. If you want to purchase any
one of these or the tools that I've used use the links below and until next time
I will see you on the trails guys, cheers!