Out Door!!

More for the out door! I told you the parts boxes were deep. There's plenty more where this came from too!

28 hole, NOS Shimano Deore XT M730 front hub.

Tioga Tange Prestige stem.

Real brake levers.

And a KORE stem, made in the USA.

Money, roll on in baby!

Progress?

I'm not a weight weenie. That is, I've never subscribed to doofus slogans like, "take care of the grams and the pounds will take care of themselves". I figure, if you select quality components, and your selections are based on your proper riding style, (no downhill stuff for the cross country bike, for example), then you'll wind up with a bike well within the range of "acceptable weight".

I recently swapped out the single front ring on the EWR for a double, and therefor I needed a front derailleur. I have a billion front derailleurs, so the question is, which one.

I have the XT that I originally put on the TST/Sandvik, but something about it seems so, well...portly!

So I threw it on the new digital gram scale. Results?...Shimano 9 speed XT - 178 grams! That's for a part that was one step down from the top! Holy crap!

Lets move on. I have a SRAM X-Gen, from back when SRAM only made one front derailleur for every group. So for a time, because it was the only front derailleur SRAM made, it was the top of the range by default. Its always looked like a porky hunk, so I've never liked it, even though it was 3 bucks on closeout. So how porky is it?...

Pretty damn porky! Sram X-Gen...188 grams! (pork!)

Those were my best choices, at least out of my supplies, overpopulated with vintage goodies as they are. So I shift gears a little and start looking outside the keeper box...and instead I look in the box of stuff heading for the eBay out door. My guidelines are simple; must be functional, must be well finished, and it must be free of pressed metal stamped bits.

I found one. 8 speed STX-RC - 13 years old - polished aluminum and very nicely finished - 4 steps down on the shwing-ladder from the top (XTR, XT, LX, STX-RC). Hmmm, I wonder how much it weighs?

STX-RC...128 grams.

So how is it then, that a mid range derailleur can be so much lighter (50-60 grams!) than the top-ish offers from manufacturers in more recent times? Is this really Progress? Of course, the new XT front derailleur (152g), and the SRAM X-0(137g) would be lighter than the SRAM and XT derailleurs described here, but still not as light as the pedestrian STX-RC.

Something to think about.