Gevenalle has been making quite a bit of headway lately, offering everything from mechanical and hydraulic brake levers matched to mechanical shift levers that can be set to either indexed or friction shift with models for short or long cable pull. One thing it can’t do (yet) is mate up to 11 speed cassettes.
But that didn’t stop Chez Velo, who wanted to use the simple, durable shifter lever combo to build up a slick 1×11 cyclocross bike, so they hacked it. By reversing the cable pull direction and mating a carbon SRAM TT shifter blade to it, they were able to make it work. But that’s really just the beginning of this incredibly cool build…
Christian at Chez Velo said the shifter conversion took about two hours with a drill and file. Sure the rear derailleur is a stock SRAM CX1 unit, but he said the overall goal of this build was to put together something unique without the usual big brands.
To put 11 speeds out back, they used an Edco monoblock cassette. Thanks to the unique design of the single piece, lightweight cassette, it’ll fit 11 cogs on a standard 10-speed freehub body. That let them use standard mountain bike tires, which don’t yet have a lot of 11-speed freehub availability.
They chose a 650B SpeedOne hardtail mountain bike frame, but put 29er wheels with Surly Knard 700×41 tires on it. They jokingly call it 28+, we call it pretty awesome.
Check out more pics of the build and plenty other mashups on their Facebook page.
