E*thirteen showcased two new drivetrain products that help give you the performance benefits of a wide range 1x specific setup, but without breaking the break.
The biggest news on that front is the new Extended Range (EX) cogs, which help extend the gear range of your current drivetrain. This product and several others like it have recently flooded the market due to the popularity (and price) of upgrading to an eleven speed drivetrain, but that doesn’t mean these cogs are easy to develop. They announced them a couple weeks before Sea Otter, and here’s our hands on look with more tech info on the development.
Spin past the break to learn more about what makes the E*thirteen EX Cog special….
The biggest challenge behind developing a new cog is finding a shifting profile that plays nice with the cassettes currently available on the market (and the army of IP lawyers defending those profiles.) So the first step was to create a tooth profile that E13 engineers thought might work and then sketch it up in a 3D design program.
Since the company had already embarked on a narrow wide chain tooth retention project, they were able to reverse engineer the design to see if they could build something that might work in the other way – namely, to facilitate the chain moving on and off the teeth.
After developing the shapes, the company sent the designs to a rapid prototyper, and within a week they were able to demo the product on the dirt. Over the testing period, they spent time hand filing cogs to test out different shift patterns and eventually made the leap from five pickup spots to six.
They also use a series of ridges to insure that clearance was optimal and locked into place. For Shimano drivetrains, the star shaped set of ridges surrounding the freehub body opening are designed to interlock with the back of the cassette. While there are several benefits to the design, what E13 discovered was that it helped improve the overall stiffness of the system. Having developed and produced several different lines of chainrings in the past, they knew that it was critical for the cog to be stiff in order to maintain crisp shifting.
The EX Cog will be available in 40 and 42T increments for Shimano Cassettes and a 40 for SRAM, and will weigh betwen 70-77 gms. The MSRP is slated to be $69.99 when the rings become available in late May.
The company is offering brand specific cogs because the shift timing and offset are different. The other major difference is that the back of the SRAM cassette is angled further back towards the hub flanges, while the back of Shimano hubs are somewhat flatter.
On hand at the show was one of the testing rigs that E13 used to test their prototypes EX cogs. As part of the R&D process, they tested their product with as many derailleurs as possible. Want to know if this will work on your setup? They have a great guide on their website.
This EX Cog is actually one of the original prototypes that was hand filed and spray painted into perfection.
If you’re interested in a matching system, E13 also has 104 BCD narrow wide chainrings that will work with the majority of cranks on the market.
What makes these guidie rings special is that they have 1mm of chain line adjustment built in. Depending on what side you install the cranks, you can either have a 49mm or 50mm. They’ve also been made slightly thicker for improved power transfer. Retail is $54.99.
In other news, the top of the line E*thirteen LG1R pedals are now available.
Since the last time we covered the product, they’ve made one minor change – by putting in small slats in the plastic frame to make removing the covers easier.
