It doesn’t take much prognosticative power to deduce that this trickle down was only a matter of time, but now we’ve heard from several of our insider sources that an X0 1×11 group is coming.
Can’t wait? The good news is you can make your own now without giving up your current X0 (or X9/X7) cranks. As illustrated here, the XX1 spider will fit on existing SRAM mountain bike cranks with the splined spider mount. Sorry XX fans, that means you’re out of luck for this conversion.
Given that you can already find a good variety of 104 BCD 1x chainrings or direct-mount chainrings that’ll eliminate the spider and save grams (here, here, here and here), we’re still figuring out the “why” of this particular hack. But, it does show how easily SRAM could transition their top-tier XX1 1×11 speed components to the lower level groups…
UPDATED: Check out Marc’s BMC with X0/XX1 mash up at bottom of post.
The spiders use the same spline pattern, regardless of whether it’s BB30 or GXP. This spider came off a BB30 XX1 crankset and fits like a glove on a two-year-old GXP X0 crankset.
The upside to using a SRAM system, whether you piece one together with an existing X0 (or X9, or X7) crankset and XX1 spider/rings or wait for the anticipated full X0 system, is that you can easily swap chainring sizes without having to remove the crankset. The wider arms may also provide a stiffer base for the chainrings, something we’ll take into account as we’re testing units from Wolf Tooth Components and Absolute Black over the next couple months.
Claimed weight for the X0 GXP crankset is 790g and the driveside accounts for about 450g. It drops down to 378g with the XX1 spider and 34T chainring.
The current XX1 chainrings retail for $94 to $131 depending on size, and the spider is also available separately aftermarket, though we’re waiting to confirm MSRP. Update as we get it, as it’ll be interesting to see what the price of piecing together a system is.
Per Marc’s comment below, the XX1 and X0 crankarms look strikingly similar and could very well be the same cranks just with different graphics.