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Shimano XTR 2019 Review – Shimano’s best MTB components ever!

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With the introduction of the latest XTR group set, Shimano unquestionably broke the tradition set by past generations of components, by creating a brand new concept which will likely to change the way we perceive the Japanese giant’s top-tier offering. The new XTR “gruppo” has finally arrived at our office, so now we’ll have a chance to learn how this innovation performs under day-to-day riding, to find out whether the 9100-series fulfills the mighty expectations we had since we first rode them at its product launch. Since word has been out this May about the arrival new 9100 XTR set, we’ve been reporting on this Shimano novelty quite a lot. No less than three articles have been released on these pages: we first introduced the new parts based on the initial press release, then Thommey explored the new technologies in more detail, finally Bence had a chance to ride an XTR-equipped bike for the first time at the Eurobike trade show. It is no coincidence that so much attention has been paid to this new MTB offering by Shimano. A number of prominent persons in the bike industry called it a true a game changer, it’s a complete redesign from the previous XTR concept, equipped with the highest-level of technology possible. Without exaggeration, the XTR 9100 offers mountain bikers dozens of dazzling innovations in one package. I was sitting on thorns while waiting for the first XTR parts to arrive in Hungary, being all so eager to experience in person what the Japanese giant top-tier set had to offer for the mountain bikers. News came from the Hungarian distributor in August that the components with the test bike will likely to arrive by September, and offered us the possibility to take the bike for a good couple of rides. Finally the test bike arrived to me at the end of September, but it wasn’t completely ready to ride. So I also had the chance to fine-tune the XTR components on it, for which I was very glad. This “hiccup” provided me with the chance of working on the new components, forming a closer acquaintance with the parts. I didn’t have to do much actually: just set a few screws and make adjustments to the shifting and the brakes, such as cutting the cables to the ideal length on the frame. Since the reader is likely to be familiar with the new XTR technologies from the articles cited above, I will not deal with them in great detail. My colleagues have done an excellent job introducing the technical background and the nuances, so my job is limited to reporting on how the group set performs while out riding the trails. In the same spirit I decided to take the pictures for this article at the end of the testing period, so the components are far from clean or shiny, their appearance reflects what’s it’s like to slice through our neighboring trails. They already a few hundred kilometers in them, with some inevitable dirt and minor wear and tear that comes with MTB riding. The test bike was fitted with a 1×12 drive system, consisting of a 32T chainring ​​at the front and 10-51T sprockets at the back. This setup was chosen by the distributor since the potential customers will most likely to be interested in a single chainring system, and this is the domain where Shimano had to do some catching up to the competition. This meant that I could not test the double chainring setup and the performance of the newly designed front derailleur. For me it was not a major downside, but others may disagree. So here is the setup that the whole world has been waiting for, Shimano’s bold attempt at the 1×12 speed drive system! Let’s start with the bike setup! The new XTR shift lever can be adjusted to suit a wide variety of hand positions and riding style. It could be positioned where most comfortable and practical. I know that the rider can get used to almost anything in the way of shifter actuation, but it’s certainly much better if you can reach the shift lever without turning the wrists, and moving of the lever does not compromise with the positive grip on the handlebar. Shimano offers also an anti-slip surface on the levers. I think this is a must, and I never understood why manufacturers use a smooth, shiny finish on these parts. Fortunately the new XTR shifter retained the easy cable replacement of the previous generations, which I had a chance to experience when setting up the shifting on the test bike. The shift lever operates in the “normal” manner: the small lever can be moved in either direction to change toward a smaller sprocket, and with the large lever the rider can move the chain up the cassette. On the other hand, the force required to shift has been much revised, the action now is so light and the lever travel is so short that I tended to double-shift on my first ride out on the trails. This is something that one easily gets used to, and later it posed no difficulty to limit gear changes to a single cog. In fact the operation of the XTR 9100 mechanical system is much reminiscent of Shimano’s electronic version: it requires so miniscule effort to change gears. The backside of this came when I had to return the bike, and first got on my otherwise excellent personal MTB rig: the shifting action on the levers now seemed mushy and painfully slow! Even though all cables are internally routed in the test bike’s frame, it was still relatively easy to connect the rear derailleur to the shifter. Based on previous experience working on similar modern carbon MTB frames I was a bit anxious about this task, along with the difficulty of dealing with the additional friction compared to external cable routing. Undoubtedly the 12-speed system requires top-notch cable routing setup – I presumed. Fortunately my […]

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