The 9-of-10 Drivetrain

The big headline here is:
Any 7-speed Shimano Hyperglide Freehub will actually work with 8 or 9 sprockets, without any modification! What you need to do is to use 8 of the sprockets from a 9-speed cassette, with the 9-speed spacers -- or 9 of the sprockets from a 10-speed cassette.  Sheldon Brown

This piece of information has big ramifications if you have a 90's MTB with 26" wheels and want to update the drivetrain without having to rebuild the wheels with new hubs. Plus frame sizing and the width of hubs that can be accepted has changed over time, so this is a simple way to find a working solution for upscaling your retro bike without having to do something dramatic like spreading the frame. Plus 26" wheels are getting harder to find. 

I wanted all the gearing I could get, so I went for the "9 of 10" conversion. I purchased an 11-32T cassette and removed the 11T cog and first spacer. The 11 and 12T is loose, whereas the rest of the cassette is a solid unit. By removing the 11T and spacer you can still use the included lock ring to attach the modified cassette to the freehub body.

As per the image above, you could use the same approach to go for a 1X drivetrain, but you'd need to find a rear derailleur that accepts a 42T cassette. The ones shown here won't work.

Before: 7 speed cassette and Shimano Exage 300LX. A solid, very dependable pairing.

After: a 9 speed cassette (10 - 1) and Shimano Deore M592 "Shadow" derailleur. Shadow denoting a narrow profile.

Although I would generally say I had no complaints about the original Exage LX300 drivetrain, I was looking to specifically improve on two things: 

1. I couldn't make the index shifting work properly running a 7-speed cassette and derailleur with the 9-speed Dura Ace bar end shifters
2. The tensioning of the Exage derailleur was always a bit wanting, which meant I had a lot of chain slap when riding on rough surfaces- which was basically all the time

In general the shifting was lazy in friction mode and if I really was pushing hard, quite often the bike would downshift on its own. If I'm being honest, that didn't really bother me all that much, given that the bike was never intended to be a high performance machine. 

What I will say is that the new drivetrain is brilliant. The index shifting works like a charm and everything is crisp and tight. 

The Tange Professional Bottom Bracket and Triple Clipper crankset were sourced from Rivendell Cycle Works, as was the Deore M592 derailleur. The cassette and 10 speed chain were purchased from Full Cycle in Ottawa, who simply had the easiest website to navigate amongst the local stores offering contactless pickup during these Covid times. 

I also bought a SRAM 10 speed master link and installed it using the Park mini chain tool I bought to remove the outer plates of one link. I bought Wolf Tooth Masterlink Combo Pliers from Primeau Velo as well, because I now have master links on all 3 of my bikes and it makes cleaning and maintenance all the easier. 

Will Keating at Rivendell took the time to have a look at the Sheldon Brown manoeuvre and advise on cassette and chain requirements even though they don't stock 10 speed Shimano parts as standard on their website. I'll definitely be dropping Will at Rivbike a line to let him know it worked! 👌

Will also advised on spindle length (113mm) for the new crankset. Sheldon Brown had the same advice, but I was nervous about ordering the wrong thing, so was great to be able to email someone and get a firm answer before hitting "buy". 

Amongst my friend group we had a healthy debate about grease, but I ended up taking the advice of RJ the Bike Guy and going with the Lucas grease shown in the photo above which is rated for marine use. It was $13.99 CAD, which I bought at PartSource. There's enough in this tub to last me a lifetime and it was less than half the price of the Phil Wood. Sheldon Brown has two grease recommendations: Phil Wood, or marine grease. In this case the lower cost option won out with RJ's solid endorsement (see blog post on paint for videos on BB servicing with RJ). 

Although I changed out the bottom bracket with an identical Japanese replacement (owing to rust in the threads and 30 years of bearing wear), the only original part of the drivetrain is the Exage 300LX front derailleur. 

I also decided to swap out the pedals. During Frankenbike's tenure as a commuter bike I was using Wellgo dual sided pedals with a platform on one side and SPD on the other. They were fine for commuting, but the sharp metal edges of the platform side tore a lot of skin off my shins during adventure rides. 

I went for Crank Brothers Eggbeater 3 pedals for two reasons: 

1. I had determined that the Eggbeater design had no sharp edges and were ideal for clipping in and out a lot, in addition to superior performance in mud, which was definitely an issue with the SPD Wellgo's
2. I found a guy selling a brand new pair for about half the price, but with no cleats, which I found at Primeau Velo. I paired those up with my new Northwave Razer shoes, which are also awesome in mud. 

I suppose technically speaking the pedals could be considered a contact point and not the drivetrain, but the whole set-up with the shoes and pedals has really been the icing on the cake for taking advantage of the rebuild. 

Last point here, is that if you look at the photo above, I matched Wolf Tooth bottle cage bolts with the pedals. It's the details that make me love this bike.