Life with an Sunrace MX8 11-46 Cassette – an honest review.

Thought I’d post my review of the Sunrace MX8 11-46 11 speed cassette I fitted to my bike last October, just before the WEMBO 24hr Worlds up in Fort William.

I had been running an M8000 XT 11-42 and thought that a bit of extra range would be handy for the inevitable climbing ‘fest that Fort William would be – around 450m per 13km lap!
So, I fitted the cassette and ran through the gears with the bike mounted on my workstand, something that surprised me a little was the fact I had to fit a couple of thing spacers behind it as it was loose on the freehub. So that sorted it was time for a little test ride, 30k later all was fine and dandy.

After a couple of weeks shifting off the 40t cog became rather sluggish (granted I spent quite a lot of time in it at WEMBO), eventually the chain would drop to the next smallest, over time this became worse to the point where I had to double shift to get the chain to drop and then go back up the cassette by one – if required.

Eventually the same problem manifested itself in the most frequently used cogs towards the smaller end of the cassette too, chain wear was good as to be expected after around 600km and a well-cared for drive-train, so it wasn’t down to that.

Last weekend at Llandovery on the MTB Marathon it just did my head in with double shifting required on all bar the upper middle section of the cassette and off the 46t also, so I’ve taken it off and re-fitted the original M800 XT and the shifting is back to perfect, both up & down the cassette.

Safe to say I won’t be bothering with a Sunrace cassette again, 750k and cleaned after every ride just isn’t good enough IMHO, when I can get at least on 2000km out of an XT one with a couple of chains

As a contrast, I got 4000kms and counting out of my last one, still shifting well on the original chain when I stripped the bike. So far the fresh one on the new build has done 1400km with no issues. It doesn’t get cleaned every ride, despite Dales slop.

Once or twice the shifting might go slightly as you describe, but generally that was due to a sticky cable.

Didn’t notice any looseness on the freehub on either cassette.

Not got enough miles on mine to judge yet, but durability is a concern vs. Shimano & Sram. Even more so if buying the pricier XD Sunrace option.

I have the MX8 as well and even from new I think it feels a bit less solid and less slick-shifting. And the lockring is a bit cack.

Shimano do SLX and XT 11-46t cassettes BTW, just in case you didn’t realise.

Shimano do SLX and XT 11-46t cassettes BTW, just in case you didn’t realise

Yeah I know that, just thought the spread on the MX8 was better, but in my experience, just not worth it in the end.

I’ll be honest, the shifting on mine isn’t as slick as the 11-42 on my other wheels, I swap wheels fairly regularly depending on tyre/amount of climbing. It is ok and wear rate around the same, I didn’t need an extra spacer on either of the hubs I’ve used it on either. Maybe you had a dud.

What I did notice is it really highlights a bent hanger compared to the 11-42.

Sounds more like a shifter , mech , mech hanger or cable issue to me . FWIW mine has been perfect with a GX mech and Shifter for a year now .

Sounds more like a shifter , mech , mech hanger or cable issue to me .

I can guarantee it’s none of them as all is perfect again once I refitted the XT.

got the same cassettes on 2 bikes, soon to be 3 1250km on sram X1 shifter / GX derailleur
and 1785km on XTR / XT

similiar mileage on an XT XT 11-46t cassette that i cant back pedal, dropped the chain a few times absent mindedly.

i noticed yesterday the double shift requirement on my second gear, but i had done 5 or 6 river crossings and it was wet and a few muddy climbs,

just recently bought a few more spare cassettes sunrace MX8 for £39 and £44 on bike-discounts.
I’ve been waiting and waiting for the 12 speed XT i may upgrade a bike to see, but for the time being i’m more than happy with sunrace

Had my mx8 on for around 14 months and it has been faultless only time I had issues I replaced the cable and it solved all the problems. Just built up a new bike, put an xt 11-46t on there and it lasted two rides before it came off for another sunrace. Just didn’t find the shifting as good. Maybe there are some dodgy ones around?

I’ve been using them for a couple of years now. I seem to be getting around 1500 miles before I notice any wear/dodgy shifting, and I don’t change my chain anywhere near often enough.

If it’s of interest to anyone, I need a spacer behind the cassette when fitting to my Hope hubs, but not my Specialized ones.

@Cb200 Pro4 or pro 2 Evo 40t? You need the spacer because those are road cassette compatible.

I’m running an 11-46 MS8 cassette – I wanted all steel cogs after having to chuck an 11-42 XT due to a knackered 42T aluminium cog. Put on a new (to me) frame at the beginning of February: new chain and chainring, original XT shifter and mech (with new jockeys).

It started grumbling a bit at c.400km. Here we go, I thought, but after sorting out a broken freehub pawl spring and tweaking the cable tension it’s been fine since. Currently at 1500km use with 29,500m of climbing, on the original cable. Happy enough. The intention is to just wear out the whole drivetrain as one then replace. I have a vague sense that I’m having to be more careful with cable adjustment than I did with the preceding XT cassette – but then, hey, the shifter and mech have got more distance on them.

I bought a Sunrace MS10, the silver one,  shifting was fine, didn’t seem to wear any faster than the equivalent priced Shimano/SRAM option,  I said nice things about it and when it wore out I bought a MX10, the black one.

The shifting is worse overall but just about acceptable, the shifting between gear 4 and 3 is particularly mediocre.

We shall see how it wears, definitely not buying another MX10, might buy a MS10 if I don’t go 12 speed.

@Cb200 Pro4 or pro 2 Evo 40t? You need the spacer because those are road cassette compatible.

Pro4, yep all these are ‘road’ freehubs so need spacer for any standard MTB cassette. Pro2Evo40T – not do straightforward, both exist. Generally, gold ano FH bodies are standard MTB fit and need no spacers but there are silver plain alloy FH bodies too that are ‘road’ and need spacers.

Not sure that colour is 100% identifying btw, real test is to look at the bottom of the splines. ‘Road’ type have a wee pocket machines at the bottom of each spline for the extra length.

In general, the comments here are exactly what I hear from everyone running Sunrace. Some are report faultless and some are ‘not as good as Shimano’ and replaced.

As Eagle has demonstrated already, it seems that tail/hanger rigidity and alignment is way more critical than for smaller cassettes, presumably simply due to angles, so I think we’ll see a lot of bikes that seemed fine spitting their dummies at big, big cassettes whoever made them and in some cases it might actually be a frame that just isn’t rigid enough to maintain alignment at those sizes.

In general though, I reckon the Sunrace issues will come down to QC not being quite as nailed down as the two big S’s and also personal perception/confirmation bias issues, possibly with a side order of clone product in the supply chain especially when sourced via eBay etc.

I’ll be surprised if these problems hang about for long…

To deal with big hills I had an 11-42 xt , and added a 50t expander from superstar components, the 50t works, but needs the 19 and 17 removing and fitting a 18t they supply.
Alas the 18t bends as did a replacement.
Fitted the 19t back and things are fine.
Frame can cope with 2x at front, may resort to this to ease.
Need to review when cassette worn

Only had the MX8 fitted 16 months and don’t record mileage but it’s been a solid performer for me. And I don’t have to check if the chain is still on when setting off in lower gears like I did with XT.

My 11-46 11 speed one has worked fine.

If the problem is not shifting right across the whole cassette, that does sound like mech hanger adjustment rather than a cassette issue.

As Eagle has demonstrated already, it seems that tail/hanger rigidity and alignment is way more critical than for smaller cassettes, presumably simply due to angles, so I think we’ll see a lot of bikes that seemed fine spitting their dummies at big, big cassettes whoever made them and in some cases it might actually be a frame that just isn’t rigid enough to maintain alignment at those sizes.

Yeah – first thing i checked when i had issues with mine.  Using a park tool alignment tool, mine was a smidge out. Stiffness won’t be an isue as it’s steel non-replaceable super thick.  I reckon it’s basically QC.  Assume mine is legit product coming from bike-discount.de.

INteresting to read the mixed reports here. I’ve been using an 11-40 MX3 for about 9 months and it’s been pretty much faultless and am about to swap to an MX8 as an 11spd conversion so hoping its going to as reliable.

If the problem is not shifting right across the whole cassette, that does sound like mech hanger adjustment rather than a cassette issue.

That wasn’t the issue, the full sweep was fine in either direction, it was the getting hung up on certain cogs that would say to me these particular cogs wore out very quickly indeed.

I was one of the early adopters of these cassettes and contributed to some extensive threads on the subject. I’ve got to say I like them. The quality is pretty good and consistent IME. They are more workman like than fancy and don’t have all the machining and profiling features of the best SRAM and Shimano offerings, but are fit for purpose and don’t cost as much as said offerings.

No one has mentioned that you can bend/twist the mech itself (usually the jockey wheel cage) which causes shifting issues that are pretty difficult to resolve without a new mech! Some bikes seem to be super sensitive to hanger alignment (9 times out of 10 bent in toward the wheel from impacts) and others you can get away with murder! Also many frames have fore and aft play of the hanger in the drop out.

In terms of noise with 1x, excluding chainrings! I’ve found that in some instances the chain rubs slightly on the jockey wheel cage, usually with all new components and it wears away after a while! I originally thought it was down to tolerances of the cassettes but that’s not the case!

No one has mentioned that you can bend/twist the mech itself (usually the jockey wheel cage) which causes shifting issues that are pretty difficult to resolve without a new mech!

Well considering the mech shifts absolutely fine with the XT cassette in place and not the Sunrace cassette – as stated in my OP – that to me suggests that the Sunrace cassette has worn as described and the mech / hanger / frame / cable / shifter are all aligned and working perfectly and AFAIK M9000 XTR mechs have a carbon cage, so pretty tricky to bend without snapping.

I get the defence and the ‘mine is fine’ posts, but in my experience they’re just not worth the money.

11sp on offer £55 at Merlin at the moment.

I’m going to jump in on 2 points.

1. I’ve run 2 MX-8 cassetess and both have been faultless. If I ever have any shifting issues it’s usually down to cables needing replaced.

2. Steve – I think we all get that you don’t like them and don’t think they are worth the cash but being so super defensive after nearly every positive post is a bit ****. Just saying 😀

Totally contrary to my experience as well, got a good few 1000km on mine and still going strong across a few bikes.. hasn’t missed a beat.

I run two of their cassettes.

Both receive little in the way of love but far from abused.

The only point of note I found was they could be a little noisy compare with their Shimano counterparts.

Nothing other to add, they seem to work just fine!

I’ve had three Sunrace 11sp and 10sp cassettes.
All three lasted well and shifted ok.
I’ve just replaced my 11sp on the Marin after 20 months – a tad longer than Shimano or SRAM before.

There are variations in manufacturing and there’s an allowable tolerance so while everything is “in spec”, it may be the variation in the derailleur is such that it interacts with the variation in the cassette to cause shifting troubles.

I’ve had similar combination with a zoom lens in cold weather: the lens on my camera body wouldn’t work but would work on a friends camera. Similarly his lens would work on my camera body. Just one of those things.

No complaints about my Sunrace 11-46,I got a good 2 years plus out of mine with two chains.

I’ve had two of the black ano 11-42s and bent both the 42t rings. They are lass laterally sting than SRAM now I’ve examined that. One I managed to rescue and I’m still using. The other was a lost cause.

I’ve also had one creak that needed additional punches on the joining pins to mushroom them out just a touch more. TBF I’ve had to do this on a Shimano XT cassette in the past too.

Otherwise, their price is good and the shift and run acceptably well. Shifting is not as slick as Shimano reminds me of SRAM x7/x9, but they do at least shift reliably.

My MX8 11-46 has been solid, no issues.

By contrast my CSMS8 11-36 also from Sunrace is a bag of pish, always loosening and developing rotational play no matter how hard I tighten the lockring. Moving to a Sram one next…

I’ve got a black one fitted to each of my main 3 bikes.

All perfect, all lasted ages. Love them.

Lack of mechanical sympathy? 😉

Last weekend at Llandovery on the MTB Marathon it just did my head in with double shifting required on all bar the upper middle section of the cassette and off the 46t also, so I’ve taken it off and re-fitted the original M800 XT and the shifting is back to perfect, both up & down the cassette.

I rode there too….and have to say that the XT cassette wasn’t faring much better. it did get me through the event, but sounded like a bag of smashed crabs.

I fitted one to mine after having xt m8000 then after an initial local break in ride I took it to dalby over the weekend and there was an awful rattle. Took it to the mechanic there and he took it to bit and said it needed another spacer just like the OP. Bit odd.

MX3 10 speed cassette went through 3 chains at 0.75 wear in a year, shifted great with an M8000 mech. MX8 cassette with same mech and an 11 speed shifter, same reliable shifting only been on 2 months it was £50 from bikediscount.de. No better or worse shifting than the previous XT 10 speed cassette they replaced as far as I can remember.

I’m running the 11-50 11 sp one for 2.5 years over two bikes. still going great at 2,500 miles. Several new chains over that time & worn out a front oval alloy too.

Actually they are rubbish avoid them and use an xt one.
On a totally unrelated note any one want to buy a one ride old xt 11-46t 😂😂

Took it to the mechanic there and he took it to bit and said it needed another spacer just like the OP. Bit odd

At least out of all the perceived awesomeness, I’m not the only one to suffer this