Hi there, I'm probably going to alienate lots of folk on here by asking this question but here goes anyhow......
I'm a w/e casual MTBer with hardly any off-road stuff and after less than 4 years and not many miles, my chain and sprockets seem rather well worn and now I'm having chain slippage to such an extent that I can't pedal up steep hills!! I thought I'd looked after it reasonably well in respect of cleaning oiling etc (even bought some Shimano wet lube!) so I'm somewhat disappointed that its worn out fairly quickly.
..sorry, back to the question, I've priced up replacing like for like (all XT level) and as I'm not now working, I have to try and keep costs down so I was wondering if I could simply replace the XT with Deore (LX?) at a vastly reduced cost. Ok, I accept that it'll be a tad heavier (as if I'd notice!) and may not quite shift as well but I'm guessing it'll last a whole lot longer as its more sustantial (steel as opposed to aluminium?)
so is it simply a straight swap I'm looking at the Deore M590 chainset, HG50 cassette and a SRAM PC971 chain (or Shimano HG73?)
Sorry for the dumb questions, I'm no expert!! oh and before anyone mentions, yes, I know I should have got a road/hybrid bike in the first place but I did intend to do lots of off-road riding but things have changed!!
SLX. The compromise that's not really a compromise.
So long as you stick with kit for the same number of gears (9 speed I'm guessing), you'll be fine. I agree that SLX is probably the best compromise though.
Oh, and I'd say stick with SRAM for the chain but others will differ.
You don't need to replace everything with XT. Plenty of people on here and a lot of the mag reviews rate SLX almost as highly as XT and you could probably drop to Deore without noticing a huge change (just a bit more weight).
It might be cheaper to replace the rings, rather than the whole chainset - although I haven't looked into the exact cost.
I am not sure if other rings are compatible with the XT chainset. You might be able to put SLX rings on the XT cranks.....but again, I'm not 100% sure about this.
Merlin have a Deore Crankset for £65, which is a pretty good price and you could always sell the old cranks to recoup the cost - jut make sure you mention that the rings have had it.
As for the cassette - you can use any other cassette so long as it's the same number of gears. Again, Merlin are selling cassettes for <£20.
Chains - I would avoid SRAM and get something KMC instead. You can get the KMC X9-73 for £15 or so.
4 years is a fairly long time to be riding one drivetrain, although it does depend how much riding it's actually had.
DO you have a chain checker? I would get one of those while ordering these bits, regularly check your chain and replace it at 0.75 growth. You should get 3 chains from a cassette (as a general rule) and as you aren't running a completely borked chain on the chainset, that should also last longer.
Are you sure you need to change your chainset? If I were you, I'd change the chain & cassette first and see how you get on. You might not need new rings on the front yet.....
+1 for all stumpy01 says.
PaulD
Thanks for the replies, I've looked into replacing just the chainrings but for the price of them you might as well replace the complete chainset. It does look to be well worn (I'm a motorcyclist so no stranger to worn sprockets!!)
Also, where are you looking to buy from? Not bought any MTB stuff in a while, bit people seem to use the German sites, like Rose Bikes, quite a lot.
Deore is a bit heavier but it's also hard as nails.
Yes, I did have a look at bike-discount.de and they seem very reasonable, are they ok?
Rose looks good too!