First Look | Rotor 13 Speed Drivetrain with added bonus bits

Hannah grabs a quick spin on the new groupset from Rotor, with 13 speed cassette. When Hannah saw the Rotor 13 speed drive train in Idaho, a few little details beyond the basic benefits of Moar Gears caught her eye. 1. Rotor 1×13 Pick And Mix First up is its modular design. There’s only one derailleur for both MTB and Road/Gravel set ups. Pick your cranks, chain ring and cassette depending on what you’re riding. If you suddenly decide to abandon your drop bar bike, you don’t need to abandon the entire groupset. Which is nice, but not actually the most interesting prospect here… Since it’s all inter-compatible, you could put roadie parts on a mountain bike – which is what the Mallen Twins have done. They’re a pair of 11 year old freeriding groms whose skills and tricks make some of us glad we don’t have to ride with them, and others of us glad we’re not their parents. Finding that MTB cranks were too long for their needs, they’ve been able to swap to road cranks to give them the perfect set up. While that’s only an option because they’re nice light weight 11 year olds (Most Singletrack readers would probably have a few warranty issues if they tried the same on their own freeride machines… and of course we’re sure that our cranks are the only thing holding us back from free ride greatness…) it seems like a pretty cool little hack to us. 2. Return to Origin The little button on the side takes you down into the smallest sprocket at the touch of a… er… little button. If you’re racing and fixing a flat, that’s a nice little quick shift that will be a welcome time saver. If you’re just taking your bike apart to fit it into your Fiat Panda after a ride, it’s a nice little faff saver that you’ll surely appreciate time and time again. 3. Get Home Gears If you’re feeling nervous about the prospect of a hydraulic shifting system then there’s a nice little ‘get home’ option here. You can actually shift gears manually, by pushing the derailleur up the sprockets with your hand. Twiddle your way up the hill in a nice big sprocket, then ride along the ridge using that ‘return to origin’ button to get you moving along the the flat, then push the derailleur back up a bit for an easier climb up to home… you can’t do that with a broken gear cable. 4. Baby Steps If you’re not yet persuaded of the merits of 1x, maybe this chart, aimed at the road and gravel folks, will help demonstrate the lengths you’d have to go to shifting between front rings in order to achieve a similarly smooth series of gear increments to Rotor 1×13. It bears little resemblance to the two half blocks with an overlapping middle that are the reality of 2x shifting, does it?