GX Eagle on a 26″ bike – will it blend?

I’ve been presented with a bike with a completely worn out 3×10 XTR setup on it (done thousands of miles!) which, due to arthritis in the rider’s left hand, she would like to switch to 1x rather than refresh her existing groupset. She would like to maintain the enormous gear range of the 3x setup, which more or less means that she’d need an Eagle setup, but I’ve never actually done a 26″ Eagle build, with its shorter chainstays etc.

Anyone have any experience here?

edit: I probably should have added some more information: The rider is only 5ft tall and is perfectly proportioned for 26″ wheels. The bike is a beautiful Intense Carbine SL, Enve’d up with carbon DT Swiss wheels – would have cost a fortune when new, so definitely worth a new life with a new groupset. DT sell XD freehubs for a reasonably price (£50 or so), so cassette compatibility isn’t an issue here.

Only problem will be aesthetic, 50t sprocket gonna look huge on a 26 inch wheel ! 😉

Surely you’d get a good enough range going 1×11 with an 11-42 and a 30t sprocket?

Only problem will be aesthetic, 50t sprocket gonna look huge on a 26 inch wheel

looks the same as a 27.5 TBH

Surely you’d get a good enough range going 1×11 with an 11-42 and a 30t sprocket?

Apparently not. The rider is not a spring chicken and likes very, very low crawler gears for climbing, but also enjoys pushing huge gears on the road (which they do a surprising amount of). We’ve been round this a few times, but she’s quite insistent that she needs the range. It’s not my bike, so I can’t second guess her.

I have 2×11 speed SRAM GX on my 29er hardtail and that gives a tremendous range of gears.

SRAM still do gripshift.  Would she be able to use gripshift for the front derailleur, or maybe for both front and rear?

fit a sunrace 11-50t with 11sp slx for cheapness.  don’t need eagle to get a crawler gear.

But may need the SRAM 10t for pushing bigger gear on the road.

If she’s used to running xtr, (cost)

would xt di2 be an option?

could easily run double then and lovely light shifter action

could easily run double then and lovely light shifter action

and also, with snycroshift, only need on shifter

Surely you’d get a good enough range going 1×11 with an 11-42 and a 30t sprocket?

Yes, for crawler, but losing two gears at the top end wouldn’t be acceptable to her:

fit a sunrace 11-50t with 11sp slx for cheapness.  don’t need eagle to get a crawler gear.

Cheapness not really an issue here – the groupset is completely dead so I’d need to replace enough bits such that GX is well within budget (< £400 for the upgrade) and TBH, I won’t save a huge amount with a hacked Shimano setup. It just feels that the GX would be the better, mechanical solution.

That said, an 11-50 combined with a 34t gives a pretty good range:

If she’s used to running xtr, (cost)

would xt di2 be an option?

could easily run double then and lovely light shifter action

We discussed this, but XT DI2 is currently £900 on Wiggle and that’s only a 1x setup too… She’d prefer to spend £400 than over £1000 on this, regardless of the fact that the bike was XTR originally. (She didn’t spec it and bought the bike second-hand). It’s a shame as I’m yet to do a DI2 build on a MTB and would have loved to do it 🙂

Yeah it’s not exactly a cheap option admittedly.

I have GX Eagle set up on a newly built 26 in full suspension bike. Yes the cassette looks quite big, but I am not too bothered by it. The bike still looks the nuts and I am sure the Intense will work with GX just fine.

Bonus is that at least your friend will look in proportion to the bike; I am 6 ft 2, so even on an XL sized bike people will mock.

Wouldn’t the mech cage be nearly dragging on the floor?

Is the NX stuff available yet?

Cheaper cassette, no need to change freehub but 11t as opposed to 10t – will 1t make that much difference to road speed?

I’ve put Eagle GX 12spd 10-50t onto a friends 26″ Canyon nerve with no problems what so ever. Wheel size and chainstay length have no bearing on being able to fit  SRAM Eagle. The Eagle mechs are no longer than the old long cage 3x mechs. As you’ve guessed all you have to do is go up a chainring size or two from a 27.5″ wheel . If you turn on gear inches in the gear calculator that will help you fine tune which chainring size she would prefer and what end of the range she would be willing to compromise on.

The mech might be the same as an old long cage mech but surely the mech sits a lot further from the axle when on 50t vs 32t (or 36t)

Cage will be pulled forward though

Cheaper cassette, no need to change freehub but 11t as opposed to 10t – will 1t make that much difference to road speed?

10%

More than a little, that’s for sure. This particular rider doesn’t like to slog up hills (low gear, pretty slow speed) and doesn’t like to spin on the road (high gear, glacially slow cadence). Yes, I have told her. No, she won’t change 🙂

Bonus is that at least your friend will look in proportion to the bike; I am 6 ft 2, so even on an XL sized bike people will mock.

Yes, she is a really good use case for a 26″ bike. She’ll never be able to buy a better one than this, so it’s certainly well worth throwing a bit of money at. To her credit, she has managed to bring me the most worn out XTR groupset I’ve ever seen. Frankly, I’m amazed that it works at all! (In reality, it doesn’t. She gets away with it because she puts so little power through the cranks. Were I to ride it, the chain wouldn’t stay on either the chainrings or cassette!)

Thanks for the advice everyone. Sounds like a go-er. Just waiting for DT Swiss to confirm that the freehub body is compatible with her hub and I’ll get it all on order.

I run XT 11-46 on a 26er no problems, I think the 50 will also be no problem.

I can agree that 1×11 isn’t particularly versatile. I would end up using the bottom two gears for road mashing /riding around the local flat trails (so increasing premature wear) and still run out of gears when I hit the steep stuff in the Alps. I have gone 2×11 XTDI2 and am really happy with the range of gears and the ratio between gears. I’m also using the synchro shift which works wonderfully. If you can persuade her to spend the extra cash she wouldn’t be disappointed.

This is pretty much the poster case for why the 11t top on 1x is limiting. If you want the speed back you need to up the chainring size and that in turn cuts your bottom end.  So long as there is a foolishly large cassette option that no one in their right mind would use, you can build out of the hole at the expense of bigger, heavier components.

Once the foolishness of the large cassette becomes BAU and the extended bottom is expected, you are straight back to choosing between low or high but not both. No way round that without ditching the system that forces 11t top, so Eagle is certainly the best option mentioned here if the rider does not wish to compromise range at either end, there’s just no way round it without looking at the 9t cassettes but you’re still out of Shimano land and the cassettes are more expensive and possibly less durable.

Have been looking at GX Eagle on a lot of bikes.

My main cause for concern on a 26″ bike would be how close the mech would be to the ground. Even on bikes that come specced with Eagle the mech hangs low in the 50

Thanks for the advice and hints all.

I did chat to her about XT DI2 and while she was certainly tempted, she needed to sit down after I mentioned how much it would cost. She then pointed at her husbands bike, a 650b Whyte for which I did an Eagle conversion earlier this year, and suggested that “one like that would be fine, thanks very much!” I don’t suppose I could argue too much.

I’ll share some before and after pics once it’s all done as it might be interesting for others undertaking the same job.

Before:

…and after:

To my eyes, it doesn’t look as daft as one might think. The rear mech does sit a little lower, but it’s certainly not a show-stopper. No issues with chainline, although it was much more sensitive to setup (as all 12-speed Eagle installs seem to be) and the cable adjustment needs to be pretty perfect to avoid pick-up on adjacent gears.

These pics show the bike with the stock 32t ring – it’ll get changed to a 34t when it turns up. When doing a test ride, my son was confident that he could have ridden it up the side of the house in its current configuration… 🙂

That doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would – mech isn’t as low either.

That frame looks well compact!

That doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would – mech isn’t as low either.

No, indeed. In fact, I probably wouldn’t give it a second glance on the trail.

That frame looks well compact!

Tiny rider – it’s a perfect size for her! In fact, it’s a pretty good fit for my 9yo son who was the test mule for it!