52/36 and 11-30: short or medium cage?
Moderator: robbosmans
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Short is what came stock with 52/36 & 11-30 on my TCR. Works flawlessly. Should work the same if not better with 53/39 since that lowers the total capacity compared to 52/36 (14 teeth difference vs 16 teeth on the chainrings).
'24 S-Works Tarmac SL8 RTP - soon™
'22 Tarmac SL7 Expert | Ultegra R8100 | Alpinist CL / Custom Rapide CLX 2x60
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'22 Tarmac SL7 Expert | Ultegra R8100 | Alpinist CL / Custom Rapide CLX 2x60
'19 Diverge E5 Comp
'18 Epic HT Comp Carbon WMN
'18 TCR Adv Pro 1 Disc
- posaunemeister
- Posts: 21
- Joined: Fri May 24, 2019 12:32 pm
- Location: Tulsa, OK
Agreed with all. I have the same setup on one of my bikes and it works just fine. Also agreed that 53/39 wouldn't be a problem either.
"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
Shimano's specifications for the derailleurs is 35 capacity for the short, 39 capacity for the medium. 52-36=16. 30-11=19 16+19=35 So in theory the short should work. With zero margin for anything extra. Suppose you wanted to go to the mountains and wanted lower gearing. You're not a professinal who can climb mountains in a 39x23. So you either put on a 11-32 cassette or put on a 34 inner ring. Now your capacity is at 37, over the official maximum for the short cage. Maybe or maybe not a problem. But lets say you want to go crazy and go 11-32 cassette AND 34 inner ring. Now you are at 39 capacity. More chance it is now a problem with the short cage. And you insist on keeping the 52 outer instead of changing it to 50 outer because you want to zoom down the mountain at 100 kph in the 52x11. And changing outer rings is really expensive. I have long cage and short cage derailleurs on bikes. Never noticed any difference in shifting between them. Makes more sense to go with the medium length cage to give yourself all opportunities in the future.
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Yep, short should work but as mentioned above I went with the long recently. Even though 11-30 is more than enough where I live I can see me adding an 11-34 once in awhile if I'm going to be in the mountains. I think it shifts great.