Any luck with old shifters/new FD?

See my post above. They work, but the old shifters have "unused" trim stops. Extraneous, but not a big deal...

Just match the new FD to the new rings and all is good.

ah sorry, the post was a little confusing at first read. In your opinion is it a worthwhile upgrade if I'm not upgrading the cranks just yet?

I personally haven't tried that yet...then again, I never seem to have any issues with the FD on my 1st Gen Force stuff anyway

Same question, but with new shifters and old model front derailleur?

Which chainrings? With old chainrings, it should work (since the cable pull is the same) but you won't have any trim function. It's up to you if that's a problem or not.

With the new chainrings I can't imagine it would work very well because of the wider spacing between rings at the teeth. That's why it's important to match the FD to the rings.

Just filed the compatibility story, should be up tomorrow morning (U.S. time).

Tanhalt, you are basically correct. Everything is backwards compatible, the only tricky bit is the lack of trim on the new shifters. However, you are incorrect about the new chainrings, they won't go on old cranks without modification (even if you didn't mind the pin being in the wrong place). They're still 130bcd, but the mount point behind the crankarm requires a different shape.

If you want the new shifters, you need to get the new crankset unless you don't mind a bit of small/small chain rub. With old shifters, the trim takes care of that. Shifting with new Yaw FD + old rings is about 80% as good as with the new crankset, but still much better than the old group.

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Hmmm...doesn't the Red S975 Quarq crank use the new rings too? I'm fairly positive that the rings attach to that spider on that in the "normal" fashion. It's just that the one bolt is "hidden" behind the crank arm (i.e. it doesn't screw into the arm itself). In other words, one can run "old" rings with the pin 180 out of phase on the Red S975 Quarq.

Are there 2 versions of the 2012 Red rings perhaps?

yes.
sram will have red rings that are clocked for conventional 5arm cranks later.

Are you saying that the tab on the big ring isn't shaped like other 4 tabs?

The small ring in this pic looks fairly "normal"...but, it's hard to see any detail on the big ring tab.


Is there a separate spacer that goes between the rings, or is that a part of the big ring? If it's integral with the ring, that would imply there are 2 versions of the big ring since that feature wouldn't "fly" with the S975 spider.

Sorry i might be reading this wrong.
But are you saying is that i could buy a new Sram 2013 FD use it with the old Shifters with better feeling then the Newer ones?
So i could be running a old(as in last year) Sram Red and have the 2013 FD with little to no issues?

Tanhalt — Yes, that tab is shaped differently. Not much, but a bit. Like I said, won't work without modification.

Chadwick — story will be up shortly that does a better job explaining it all (I hope), but in short: yes, new FD will work great with old shifters. In fact, if you buy the new FD and DON'T buy the new crankset, the old shifters are probably better because you still have the trim function. New FD + new crankset = no need for trim. New FD + old/non-SRAM crankset = trim needed to prevent chain rub in small/small crosschain combo.

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"New FD + old/non-SRAM crankset = trim needed to prevent chain rub in small/small crosschain combo."

Casey: I am very much looking forward to your article as I am interested in using the new Yaw front derailleur with my old Red shifters and Vumaquad crankset. I currently use a Shimano FD-7800 mechanism with "good" but not "great" results.

Here is where you are confusing me: My Red shifters allow trim when in the large chainring only. The small/small combo would require a trim function while in the small chainring. Am I missing something?

Are you sure? The only reason I'm being insistent is that I've actually seen an S975 with "old" rings on it...and that wouldn't be possible if the 2012 Red Rings had some sort different feature requirement on that one tab. Obviously, it would be "counterproductive" to have that tab mount to the crankarm on the Quarq version of the crankset, so the S975 spider mounts the rings normally, i.e. with a spider tab sandwiched between the rings.

So...I'm thinking that maybe your set is some sort of pre-production version? Maybe it would be worth it to check with SRAM on what rings are used on the S975 cranks? Just trying to help make your article "complete"

BTW, when you say "modification", are we talking about just filing off a bit off material or something more "major"?

Yep, just minor modification. Perhaps mine are pre-production, I'll double check. Regardless, that isn't in my story, left this one to shifter/derailleur compatibility.

mca56 — you are correct, I tested with old Rival (with trim in the small ring) and old Red (with trim in the big ring) shifters. For some reason I got the two switched around here, apologies. SRAM moved the trim function from inner to outer a few years ago, oddly enough the old inner trim shifters work better with the new stuff (getting rid of that small/small chain rub that I mentioned).

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Twitter: @CaleyFretz