Am I right in thinking the 970 chainrings are a different diameter to XT?
Do any other firms make half decent rings?
Regards Steve.

Hi

TA do some nice ones – Sismic. Alternatively look at Middleburn.

GB

XTR 970 are the same as XT 770.
I've replaced my inner with an XT and works like the one it replaced.

Just googled TA and it came up with an old post on from 5 months back. Some good advice on there.

They're a standard BCD, so you can use anything, sort of… The inner ring is 2mm thinner, so you need some 2mm spacers if you want to use a different inner ring.

As Gee said, the TA Sismic are a direct replacement, the outer ring matches the 'profile' of the XTR arms, although there's nothing else particularly special about the M970 ones.

Cheers guys. Thanks for the info, will sort something out a lot cheaper than XTR.

Mine have an SLX inner ring and deore middle. And a skinny pointless bashring for a big 😉

I tried middleburn on M970 & the shifting was never the same. tried lots of different spacers etc. I was lucky to find a full set of M970 rings cheap on ebay.

XTR chainrings last really well for the money. I have had 2 1/2 years out of the same outter and middle chainring on my XTR M970 chainset. I used to go through a set of Middleburn rings every 9 months-1 year. I wear through the inner chainring, at the rate of about 1 a year, and am on my 2nd replacement. Worth considering when you think about the price of XTR. of course they also shift beautifully.

I use deore inner and lx middle I think on my XTR with an E13. It works with the spacers. I took some pics when I last changed them: Deore on XTR Cranks

Sorry for the hijack but it's related.

I have an XT M770 chainset, does this take standard rings or do I have to do the same as the above post link to get deore rings to fit?

XT is standard I think. I think if you get deore though there are a couple of small tabs you have to file off to get the middle to fit. I might be wrong…

Ta for that doug_, got a few deore rings lying around and didn't like to waste them.

It's the inner that you need to file the bits off. I've just done it on my XTR!