LTWOO RX hydro sets

[jonathanf2]

Sometimes I feel like Trace Velo has access to my AliEx wish list! I swear he's reviewing all the parts I've been eyeballing, even that weird hollowed out crankset! Lol

[mirphak]

He didn't even care to answer an email I sent to Joe (chinacycling) and him sharing my impression on the groupset (also it was me who told him about the silly screw to soften the shift lever). Joe answered and we exchanged a few tips and tricks, but Luke (tracevelo) never did. Megh.

Also, his build is nice, but he is dangerously getting to a budget that is no longer cheap compared to good/decent store/boutique bikes. For 3000 bucks you can get an electronic hydraulic bike from a 'western' brand with warranty, which in addition is endurance so no ugly spacers under the stem ...

https://www.canyon.com/es-es/bicicletas-de-carretera/gran-fondo/endurace/cf/endurace-cf-7-di2/3478.html?dwvar_3478_pv_rahmenfarbe=BK%2FBK

[00Garza]

Can’t fault Luke for wanting to expand beyond bottom of the barrel, low end parts. I think he’s thoroughly covered that. He also needs to keep viewers interested with new content. Chinese fully hydro groups are the trending thing right now, and info on it is in high demand.

Bummer he doesn’t interact with all his viewers. Maybe email isn’t his forte?

[SlouchinPhysics]

Has anyone here tried to mount 180 mm brake rotors with the GRT groupset, if so can you send a picture of your setup. I've been doing my build with them and the brake calipers require a lot of shims in the front and just do not fit in the back when using a 180 mm rotor.

[avocadobike]

could someone please help me out. ive purchased and L-Twoo hydro road groupset but havent decoded on a crankset, any recomendations? i was thinking of going with a shimano 12s 105? thoughts?

[mirphak]

I use the RX4 from Ali.

[dsveddy]

I'm going to type this up quickly before I go to work, so I apologize in advance for not attaching photos for proof. I'll add them in later

Just took delivery of the carbon-edition R9 2x11S Hydro groupset. Purchased on AE from what seems to the the LTwoo official store. Chose the "no box" option since it was much cheaper. Didn't ship with brake oil as expected. Bought it since I already have some 11-speed kit and I wanted to save some money.

Seems to be nearly identical to the RX except the shift paddles seem to be injection-molded plastic rather than carbon reinforced like they are on the RX. RD indeed shipped with full-carbon cage. Not that it really matters because that RD is a pig no matter what.

Weights:
-RD : 229g
-FD: 101g
-F Brake Caliper + hose: 162g
-R Caliper + hose: 180g
-L Shifter + cable: 287g
-R Shifter + cable: 289g
-Total (inc. cables+hose): 1248

There was some listing where the groupset was quoted as 1167grams, so a < 100gr & < 7% difference to actual-with-cables+hoses weight is not too shabby. It is 27 grams heavier than the RX set weighed in Jourdan Coulmain's YT video, although he measured shifters without the cables on the scale, so that might account for 10 grams or so.

Edit #1:
Still haven't had time to upload photos, but I've been inspecting them. Like others have said, the derailleurs are trash. RD has some kind of weird wiggling and play that can be felt through the parallelogram and tensioner. Probably less than 0.5mm across the assembly. No way to tighten it up since all the joints are riveted. I guess I can pray it will be nicer under tension but SRAM derailleurs sure as hell don't have this play. The other thing that worries me about the RD is that the cable angle looks like it will wildly bend around as it runs through the gears. On a SRAM derailleur you get a nice arm that keeps a fairly straight cable line to the barrel adjuster. Nothing like that here. I'm honestly at a loss as to how this thing is supposed to shift effectively. Most of the excess weight is coming from the hanger knuckle IMO. It's about 50% wider than a SRAM force knuckle, and seems to have little milling for light-weighting. Sad

The FD body feels like cheap stamped steel. The built-in cable-housing stop and tensioner are nice nods to a "hidden cable" future though.

Basically, you get what you pay for. In my case, I paid significantly less than I would have for mechanical 105, so I guess I am pretty happy still.

[elmtree]

Any ideas when the price for these is going to come down? Seems like maybe they're still backed up on production?

[jonathanf2]

I have GRX hydraulics on my gravel bike and I was considering going with LTwoo, but now I'm thinking Juin Tech GT-Fs might be in my future for my road bike and keeping things mechanical.

[mirphak]

I haven't tried the Juin Tech, but the zrace br002 were a bit shitty. Having hydros now I wouldn't consider going back to mechanical.

[00Garza]

Pulled the trigger on the Ltwoo 1x11 gravel group. Should be here in a few weeks. I’ll give it a go as is, but if the rear mech is as woeful as some say, I’ll replace it with a Grx.

[dsveddy]

I did some more inspection of the R9 11S carbon-pulley RD to figure out why it's so freaking heavy.

My notes:

-R9 (and I'm guessing RX) aluminum material is cast aluminum. You can see circular marks on the parts where the aluminum was poured into the cast. Dura-Ace, Ultegra, Force and Red RDs are machined from billet. Casting of course is much cheaper, but the reasons why it makes the derailleur heavy are threefold: 1) billet is almost always a stronger material per unit of weight than cast, so therefore the theoretical limit of how light the part can be is lower. 2) complex and thin features that save on material and weight are harder to cast, so the part is bulky in the first place to make casting possible. 3) It's not really possible to machine cast aluminum to make it lighter in a manufacturing setting. I do think I'm going to attempt doing some derailleur tuning with my dremel though anyways

-Hanger screw appears to be chromed steel on the R9, while on the RX it looks like aluminum. This probably accounts for a lot of the weight savings on the RX

-Cable screw is not tapped into the material, but rather backed by a thick steel nut! I think there is a chance to save a gram or so there alone.

-Lastly, I've identified the play in parallelogram comes from the width of the parallelogram links being slightly smaller than the body, which accounts for the play in the parallelogram.

In general, this rear derailleur is designed to be dirt cheap. You are not getting anything that approaches Force or Ultegra quality with these.

[jonathanf2]

I did some more inspection of the R9 11S carbon-pulley RD to figure out why it's so freaking heavy.

My notes:

-R9 (and I'm guessing RX) aluminum material is cast aluminum. You can see circular marks on the parts where the aluminum was poured into the cast. Dura-Ace, Ultegra, Force and Red RDs are machined from billet. Casting of course is much cheaper, but the reasons why it makes the derailleur heavy are threefold: 1) billet is almost always a stronger material per unit of weight than cast, so therefore the theoretical limit of how light the part can be is lower. 2) complex and thin features that save on material and weight are harder to cast, so the part is bulky in the first place to make casting possible. 3) It's not really possible to machine cast aluminum to make it lighter in a manufacturing setting. I do think I'm going to attempt doing some derailleur tuning with my dremel though anyways

-Hanger screw appears to be chromed steel on the R9, while on the RX it looks like aluminum. This probably accounts for a lot of the weight savings on the RX

-Cable screw is not tapped into the material, but rather backed by a thick steel nut! I think there is a chance to save a gram or so there alone.

-Lastly, I've identified the play in parallelogram comes from the width of the parallelogram links being slightly smaller than the body, which accounts for the play in the parallelogram.

In general, this rear derailleur is designed to be dirt cheap. You are not getting anything that approaches Force or Ultegra quality with these.

How much does it weigh? 105 R7000 is like 220g. Does it weigh more than that? If that's the case, I'd probably just use Shimano components.

[jonathanf2]

New Trace Velo covering the LTwoo 1x GRT hydraulic groupset. A bit concerning is that he crashed his bike and broke the left carbon shift lever. I've crash a bunch of times on my GRX 400 levers and they're still working strong. Maybe carbon isn't the best material for levers. I think I'll stick with my slightly heavier alloy drop shifters!

[RDY]

New Trace Velo covering the LTwoo 1x GRT hydraulic groupset. A bit concerning is that he crashed his bike and broke the left carbon shift lever. I've crash a bunch of times on my GRX 400 levers and they're still working strong. Maybe carbon isn't the best material for levers. I think I'll stick with my slightly heavier alloy drop shifters!

He went down pretty hard.  If the lever didn't take a lot of the impact, something else might have snapped.   Also that was really terrible riding.  He has a tendency to turn his bars quite a lot rather than just leaning the bike side to side when he's out of the saddle, so I thought he'd go down before he did, and he turned the bars way too sharply on a loose, soft, cambered surface whilst still applying power when he did go down.