Incompatibility between mtb and road gear? Don't tell that to the MTB double on my touring bike please, or it might fall off.
Yes. While the chain pitch, and tooth sizes mean that a Shimano MTB cassette, chainset, chain, and even derailure, will work with the road kit, and visa versa. That doesn't follow once you start moving to the indexed shifters. The pull ratio of the shifters for MTB and Road are different, as are the pull ratios between 8ps, 9sp, 10sp, and 11sp. This means that a Shimano Ultegra right shifter, will not shift a MTB rear derailure properly. And visa versa. There are a few exceptions that do kinda work if you bodge it, or may not perform as efficiently as you might expect. I have a Tiagra 4700 front shifter, working with an XT front mech. It took a lot of work to setup, but once setup, it has worked. But according to Shimano, SJS Cycles, and the Dutch importer of shimano, this will not work.
Oh they are doing that. Go from my evening 10 to any grass-roots open TT (a market segment that is far bigger than the TCR) and you'll find many (and most in the first half, and all at the sharp end) rocking chainrings bigger than 53
Right, so one end of the market takes the ring off and puts something bigger on. The other end of the market want to remove the one there and put something smaller in, but can't.
Having stuff between the 50/34 compact that is smallest in the road range, and the 28/38 that is the largest of the MTB range, would fill a gap in the market. 46/30 is a nice middle ground between the two. It would be great if more of these were available, and compatible with the rest of what we're riding. The BCD decision that Shimano made on road, has kinda locked them in.
You do have a choice. If you want a bike that looks like a race bike but has low gears, ask your bike shop at sale time to swap your chainset and/or cassette for you, they'll be happy to oblige and may not even charge if they have one in stock they can use our think they can re-use the one off your bike. Or if you buy from something like Trek Project One, you can name your spec to suit. If you're too awkward to talk to your shop about modifying your bike, that's your problem not theirs.
Please send me a list of 46/30 chainsets I can ask my bike shop to swap onto the new bike. Please send a list of larger cassettes that will work with the RX805 rear mech, when run with a chainset with a 16 tooth gap.
At your local club 10, and your local track the top half of the field won't have a 50t chain ring. Great. James Hayden won the TCR with a 46t front chain ring. If I get a place for TCRno7, I'll be riding it with a 28/38 chainset.
Your accusations of industrial sexism/slowism/whateverism would carry a lot more weight if you didn't make such inane comparisons as this one. The two have practically nothing to do with each other. Learn why they don't.
I was pointing out that that people at your TT club want one set of kit, and someone else riding a different style of cycling wants something else. It's not a comparison, that's my point. I feel that there is a gap in the market between the 28/38 of the MTB line, and the 50/34 of the Road line, that due to conscious design choices making the two ranges incompatible, it is not easy to have a bike using a mix of both ranges, which makes it very hard to build a bike with lower gears. The fact that many of those who would like for there to be lower gears as an option are from minorities, merely reinforces the need. We can either try to be more inclusive, design for more people (esp when it's not a massive amount of redesign needed), or we can continue to be the unwelcoming world that cycling is currently.
James Hayden certainly doesn't need small chainrings most of the time. He only needs it on his custom, free, hyper specialised bike designed to win a specific race.
His TCR racing kit is definitely not suited for the average person. For a start, you'd need a 28" waist or less. His nickname is skinny!
I'm not sure that waist size really impacts the rest of the bike, with perhaps the exception of the saddle choice. Yes his bike is designed with a single goal in mind. Guess what. So is mine. And the new bike I am building is also being built with a very specific goal in mind. That goal is to get from the Black Sea, to the Atlantic, in 15 days or fewer. But that same bike will be riden around Noord Holland, and Limburg, Over the Ardennes, to Paris and back from Brussels, and maybe, just maybe, on a Dutch group ride made up entirely of awesome women.
This is about accessibility (or it was)
I suggest that most people who buy of the peg bikes - particularly at the cheaper end - will often not know what they want or need, and bike salespeeps are often fecking useless unaware that their choices may not represent the best ones for others. (not unlike interweb experts 
)
Exactly, these days as I've had to study it, I can take on pretty much any local mechanic for knowledge of compatibility within the Shimano range, as well as options for lower gears (which is basically the FSA SL/K Modula 46/30, or the praxis works 46/32). But when I started out, I wouldn't have known any of this. If I hadn't taken a respected cyclists advice to build my own bike I would have gone to the bike shop, got some carbon thing, and found it distinctly Not Fun™.
I'm not the only one. I met a local cyclist who said (slightly paraphrased):
"I got a bike, but I wasn't enjoying it. I then met my boyfriend, he looked at my bike and laughed, He helped me get a better bike and it's been amazing."
Her new bike was mostly stock, it just had better gears than you might get out the factory.
My personal experience was (guesses slightly) 18 years ago, when I went to buy a bike as a newbie and came away with something with a 39/52, and I'm guessing a 25 rear. I couldn't get up the Devon hills, gave up and gave the bike to my other half.
6 years later I tried again and bought a hybrid with a triple, and have cycled pretty much every day since
This story is reflected in garages and sheds across the country. How many people have watched Vos or Froome, thought "I wanna try that" got missold a bike, tried it, found it way too hard, and the bike sites there doing nothing?
(The divergence between Shimano road and MTB rear mech standards for 10/11 speed is a right PITA, but at least there are options)
Yeah. It gets even more complicated if you add in Di2.
The wonderful thing about standards is there are so many to choose from...
kummerspek
Best German word ever. 
Agreed, tho I was surprised to find that not all Germans know it. Other useful words to borrow from German: Gemütlichkeit, Schadenfreude.
The Flemish word of the year 2018 is also a great loan word, but it's a sod to pronounce, even for someone who can speak basic Dutch moordstrookjes.
Don't worry - real men don't need 11sp cassettes.
Troll.. :p
The main way to avoid high ratios is to go for junior cassettes. 14/30 10 speed cassettes are available.
https://kidsracing.co.uk/collections/cassettes-chains-british-cycling-triathlon-gearing-rollout-limits
The problem there is they tend to not go big enough at the big cog. Sure, 14-30 and 14-28 exist, but they are suboptimal for the use case I suggest.
What you can do tho, is take your ultregra 11-34, or XT 11-40, and your Junior 14-28. Take the smallest 3 cogs off the Junior set, and put them on the adult set, This gives you 14,15,16,17,19,21,23,25,27,30,34, or 14,15,16,17,19,21,24,27,31,35,40. Which is a nice idea, however, it does limit your top speed. At 90rpm on with a 50t chain ring, you're at 40.9kph, and on the 38t, it's 31kph. The main reason to do this would be to get extra out of the limited capacity of your rear mech. An RX805 has a capacity of 39t. With a 16t difference at the front, you would be looking at maximum range at the rear of 23t. 36-14 = 22, vs 34-11 = 23t or 36-11=25t. There's not much point in doing it with the XT cassette, but on the Ultegra, there is some sense in it.
I have doubts about using a 1x setup for a PBP season. Using a small single chainwheel, and a wide ratio cassette, doesn't spread the wear. Chains stretch due to progressive 'hooking' of frequently used sprockets.
The smaller the sprockets, the faster the wear. The larger gaps between ratios with small sprockets means that only a few sprockets are generally in use. Large chainwheels and larger sprockets last longer, and are kinder on chains.
Agreed. For most mortals, a 1x road setup just doesn't offer you the range unless you mostly ride in .nl or the fens. I've been pondering a winter fat bike with a 1x setup, purely on reliability grounds, But there I'm not so fussed about the lack of top end.
Doesn't do anything about the issue with increased wear.
I've come to accept that I need a new chain every ~4500km, and a new cassette every ~13000km, and a new chainset about every 30000km. It's not exactly cheap, but it's affordable, and given I basically eat, sleep, work, ride, repeat, I'm ok spending that money. Some may feel it poor value. But that is for each of us to make her mind up on.
larger chainrings (50t+) feel smoother through the pedals, wear less, but weigh more. 1x works v.well for cx and mtb where the changes of terrain and inclines are sudden, so bigger gaps are desirable to quickly find the right gear, plus there's no front mech to clog up with mud. 1x for the road is suboptimal, unless for a very specialised course/discipline e.g. flat(ish) tt, commuting.
Exactly.
J
