Wide Range Road on the Cheap – Lindarets and WTC Team up for the Roadlink

@Askar,

I’m not sure where the $500 figure comes from. At $22 for the RoadLink and <$40 for an SLX 11-36t cassette, we come in cheaper than many replacement front chainrings. Sure, if you want an 11s 11-40 single-ring setup you'd pay more- but even then the new M8000 XTs have an MSRP of $130 (and a lower street price). Add a Wolf Tooth Drop-Stop chainring and the whole package could easily come in under $200.

Marc

Sounds Great! Thanks for providing Capability list.

Ascar – I completely agree. In fact, I only ride a one speed and view anything that has to do with changing gears is an expensive fix to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Joking aside, this is a great option for a versatile 1x cross bike. 11-36 cassette and a 44 tooth ring and you could go most places comfortably. Oh, and it will be a couple bills at most.

that seems like a lot of chain flopping around when in the higher gears. This will be good when road derailleurs have clutches

YES! Now I can run 11-36 with a road derailleur on my cross bike/adventure bike/touring bike

Ten bucks says there’s a road derailleur with clutch out by xmas.

This is good stuff. I swapped my ultegra di2 10 speed group to a gravel bike with a k-edge conversion to run an 11-36 with a compact crankset. Fantastic setup. Good to see additional options for running big cassettes with road come along.

There’s nothing wrong with Shimano front derailleurs. I get why SRAM does singlering, their front derailleurs are crap, so bad that it make the huge gaps of a wide range cassette worth the tradeoff. But that’s not necessary with a Shimano drivetrain, except maybe by beginners who haven’t worked out how to shift gears.

@Kernel- Instructing other people you don’t know and whose income you don’t know is far more gauche than complaining about the price of bike parts, imho. The Angry SingleSpeeder may not have been the first to give this advice to people who say bikes are too expensive, but I seem to have been hearing this comment more since he said it a few weeks back. He backed up his argument by saying something like, “I am not smart, that’s not what I am known for, so you should listen to me”. And not everyone is in a position to get a different job. And lastly- has ascar himself complained more than once to your knowledge about prices? Or are you heaping the complaints you’ve heard from others on his shoulders?
All that said- 21 bucks for this smart little widget is frankly a steal; seventy bucks or so for a wider range cassette seems quite reasonable, too. The price for an XT- or Ultegra-level cassette has been about the same for years, in spite of inflation.

Don’t worry, prices will drop once baby-boomers get too old for the sport, and gen-x-ers start thinking about their retirement. There’s still a lot of value at the low end (look at Felt), bike companies are just trying to cash out while they can.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned using a mtb derailleur instead, I run SRAM and it works great for wide-range with road shifters. Also, it’s not just about 1x setups. I’m a big guy, but I still like to make it up hills. A wide range cassette let me switch to a compact setup with near-touring gearing.

Are mtb derailleurs so unsightly that they can’t be on a road bike?

@FreeBeer,

While 9s Shimano road and derailleurs were cross-compatible, 10s and 11s aren’t- which is why riders aren’t able to use clutch mountain derailleurs with STI levers. That said, Gevenalle does make a clever ‘cross-oriented shifter that *will* work with Shimano mountain derailleurs. Ren Cycles, out of Portland, have used those in combination with our GoatLink for a 10s 11-40 adventure build:
https://www.facebook.com/REN.bicycles/photos/a.355955964553556.1073741830.346140455535107/508408495974968/

Ordered and shipped yesterday for my wife’s bike. We live in steep hill country (and those hills provide shelter on crazy windy days). She will love the shifting this provides on her 11-36, as compared to the extra long b-screw currently in place.

GO MINNESOTA!

@Cheese: You can’t run a SRAM Force 1 rear derailleur with Shimano shifters…

@Ultraclyde,

Unfortunately, I think that we’re actually getting further from that point. Before indexing, it was somewhat easy to mix one thing with another. We ran Suntour thumb shifters with Shimano derailleurs and later terrible CNC’d levers from one company with similarly terrible CNC’d cantis from another. But there’s little incentive for the bigger companies to offer interchangeability- not only can they better control the user’s experience (think Apple/Mac), leading to improved rider satisfaction, but there’s more money to be made if replacements have to come from the mothership.

It’s not ideal for those looking to tweak one thing or another- but even I would argue that the majority of riders get better-performing components from the current model. And heck- it gives us the opportunity to fill in the gaps.

I still run a triple because I like wide range AND close ratios.

@Velociraptor: This is about (inexpensively) modding an existing Shimano drivetrain to run 11-36, etc. Not ripping everything out and replacing it with SRAM.

Already running an X.9 mid-cage rear (no clutch) with a 36T XT cassette and chain on an all-road bike with full Apex up front (2×10, road levers, 50/34 chainrings). Don’t have any issues, and have a matching X.9 short cage with clutch waiting in the wings when I go back to 1×10 on that bike. Very happy with the ease of mashing up the SRAM stuff.

@Dominicadl: For road, you’ll want the Force 1 rear derailleur, which effectively replaces the CX1. Long cage supports up to 11-36T for 10 speed and 10-42T for 11 speed w/ XD or 11-36+T w/o.

https://www.sram.com/sram/road/products/sram-force-1-rear-derailleur#specs (Scroll down for compatibility map link, 3rd slide.)

My road bike is 26/42 11-27 and the off-roader is now 24/38 11-30.

I don’t like triples and I like relatively closely spaced gearing, so double it is (don’t want the big jumps between sprockets you get with 1x drivetrains). I also REALLY dislike the look of long cage derailleurs.

The only compromise is using 11t and 12t sprockets, but those are downhill only gears, so no biggie.

Looks like a great component to assemble on my bike.

This is not a new idea? Been doing this year’s, and £20 is definitely a rip of for cheap grade ally, easily made at home with sparse tooling, or lol around net you will find extended hangers or similar for a fraction of the price.