L-Twoo, Sensah or 105?

[Jet the Panda]

I have never had a road bike before. I have 3 different fixed gear track bikes, with a bunch of Aliexpress carbon handlebars, stems, seatposts, 3D saddles, a fork and some lights.

I've found a good local deal on a Winspace SLC 2.0 disc version, should be in my size, I'm going to go check the frameset out next week.

I have no idea about groupsets, when I borrowed my colleagues road bike to go to the post office I stayed in the same gear the whole time because I couldn't figure out how to shift

[toxin]

If you're not penny pinching then 105 all the way.

[electrolux]

105 all the way. Particularly good if its your first groupset as there are mountains of excellent tutorials on install and tuning

[Jet the Panda]

My original post got cut short for some reason. Just wrote a pretty long reply which got cut short again. Very weird...
From what I can see 105 is £500 new. Honestly that's a bit more than I'd like to spend on it, but if I really have to I can.
L-Twoo have their R9 2x11 available for £136. This seems very cheap! There are some different configurations available with different brakes and chainsets which push the price up a bit.
Sensah SRX 1x11 is available for £215. From what I've read and seen this is quite a nice groupset too.
I really wouldn't mind spending a bit less on the groupset and having some spare cash for the wheelset!
Is there on particular China Group in particular that everyone agrees is the go to? better than the rest? I've read that 11spd is easier to work with and more reliable than 12spd so that's what I've been looking at.

[Pedaldancer]

First thing: you have to decide if you want to go with our without front derailleur. The common style for road bike is with front derailleur, which gives you a large range of gears with small steps in-between the gears.

Second: without any judgment on quality and reliability, Sensah, Ltwoo and Shimano follow very different styles of shifting.
Sensah is equal to Sram. Only one lever does the shifting in both directions.
Shimano uses two levers. One for up, the other one for down.
Ltwoo uses one lever and one thumb shifter like Campagnolo does.
You see.. your choice influences not only the spent money.   

 

[raisinberry777]

Is there on particular China Group in particular that everyone agrees is the go to? better than the rest? I've read that 11spd is easier to work with and more reliable than 12spd so that's what I've been looking at.

None of them, really. Sensah is probably okay, but the hoods are pretty chunky and front derailleur shifting is so-so. It's also fairly expensive.

L-Twoo mechanical seems okay but there are reports of breaking levers, ergonomic issues around bumps in the levers and it's impossible to replace the lever hoods if you crash.

L-Twoo electronic - perhaps out of budget - seems great... until it stops working.

Wheeltop is electronic only and there's not many groupsets out there in the wild.

If it's your first time building, and you're going with a mechanical groupset, I'd strongly recommend picking a Shimano groupset like 105 R7000 (or even 12-speed R7100). It's a proven product and many people can help you out if there are issues. It should be easy enough to find a second-hand R7000 group.

[Jet the Panda]

First thing: you have to decide if you want to go with our without front derailleur. The common style for road bike is with front derailleur, which gives you a large range of gears with small steps in-between the gears.

Second: without any judgment on quality and reliability, Sensah, Ltwoo and Shimano follow very different styles of shifting.
Sensah is equal to Sram. Only one lever does the shifting in both directions.
Shimano uses two levers. One for up, the other one for down.
Ltwoo uses one lever and one thumb shifter like Campagnolo does.
You see.. your choice influences not only the spent money.   

I'm used to riding fixed gear in 52/17 everywhere I go, not up many hills but up some hills non the less. I think I would be fine with a 1x drive chain with no front derailleur. I also like the idea of building a lightish bike.
Regarding the shifting style, I've never experienced any of them before so they would all be new to me.
Is the L-Twoo R9 11spd groupset really so bad?
I'm ok with hunting down shimano parts on ebay and facebook marketplace, but I'm also a big fan of buying cheap things that do the job from Ali

[raisinberry777]

I'm used to riding fixed gear in 52/17 everywhere I go, not up many hills but up some hills non the less. I think I would be fine with a 1x drive chain with no front derailleur. I also like the idea of building a lightish bike.
Regarding the shifting style, I've never experienced any of them before so they would all be new to me.
Is the L-Twoo R9 11spd groupset really so bad?
I'm ok with hunting down shimano parts on ebay and facebook marketplace, but I'm also a big fan of buying cheap things that do the job from Ali

1x on a road groupset is not necessarily any lighter for the equivalent range of a 2x drivetrain. You need a bigger cassette and a derailleur with a clutch mechanism (like L-Twoo's GR series or Sensah's SRX series). The additional weight of these is about equivalent to an inner chainring and regular rear derailleur. There are certain applications where it makes sense, but odd as it may sound, a budget build is generally easier to do with 2x.

With L-Twoo, consider issues like the cracking lever body like this guy had:


Or the initial production run where there were tons of snapping levers - here's a good review of someone's experience with L-Twoo RX hydraulic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/11wczqj/ltwoo_rx_hydraulic_a_lot_of_potential_wasted_by/

Might be a little more expensive to buy Shimano 105 up front, but you'll remember the quality long after you've forgotten the price. The Chinese groupsets are getting closer, but are held back by QC issues and a lack of resolution of these through sellers/factories.

[electrolux]

My original post got cut short for some reason. Just wrote a pretty long reply which got cut short again. Very weird...
From what I can see 105 is £500 new. Honestly that's a bit more than I'd like to spend on it, but if I really have to I can.
L-Twoo have their R9 2x11 available for £136. This seems very cheap! There are some different configurations available with different brakes and chainsets which push the price up a bit.
Sensah SRX 1x11 is available for £215. From what I've read and seen this is quite a nice groupset too.
I really wouldn't mind spending a bit less on the groupset and having some spare cash for the wheelset!
Is there on particular China Group in particular that everyone agrees is the go to? better than the rest? I've read that 11spd is easier to work with and more reliable than 12spd so that's what I've been looking at.

Without knowing which exact seller you're looking at the price comparisons are a false economy, I assume you're in the UK?

For £500 you can get a full Shimano 105 Groupset including crankset, cassette, disc rotors and chain.

With Ltwoo and sensah you aren't getting those additional parts.

Like for like parts: Shifters, hoses, cables, calipers, rear derailleur, front derailleur.

105 R7020: £280 On AliX
Ltwoo R9: £135 On AliX
Sensah Empire: £190 On AliX

Yes, Shimano is much more expensive, but its not £500 when you consider like for like parts.

[electrolux]

Side note; I like the irony of chinertown convincing someone to buy shimano

[Jet the Panda]

Thanks a lot for your help guys.
I am going to forget about Chinese groupsets and just get 105 or slowly gather used Ultegra/105 to finish a bike in time for summer.

1x on a road groupset is not necessarily any lighter for the equivalent range of a 2x drivetrain. You need a bigger cassette and a derailleur with a clutch mechanism (like L-Twoo's GR series or Sensah's SRX series). The additional weight of these is about equivalent to an inner chainring and regular rear derailleur. There are certain applications where it makes sense, but odd as it may sound, a budget build is generally easier to do with 2x.

I have no idea what a derailleur with a clutch mechanism is, do the shimano road derailleurs have this feature? I'm going to need to do some research. Why does going 1x require a bigger cassette? is it so that you can get a bigger range of gears?

[electrolux]

Thanks a lot for your help guys.
I am going to forget about Chinese groupsets and just get 105 or slowly gather used Ultegra/105 to finish a bike in time for summer.I have no idea what a derailleur with a clutch mechanism is, do the shimano road derailleurs have this feature? I'm going to need to do some research. Why does going 1x require a bigger cassette? is it so that you can get a bigger range of gears?

The clutch is effectively a much stiffer spring in the rear derailleur to allow higher chain tension. Its useful for riding over rough terrain as it stops you chain slapping around so much. Shimano 105 does NOT have a clutch, only shimano GRX and MTB derailleurs do. You're better off looking up a youtube vid if you want more detail, will be much more intuitive.

Yes, to get a bigger range of gears, this is a big minefield and was the hardest decision when I built my first bike.

Example; 2x setup with 50-34 Crankser and 11-34 Cassette.
The easiest uphill gear is 34/34
The hardest downhill gear is 50/11

Example2; 1x setup with 40t Crankset and 11-34 Cassette.
The easiest uphill gear is 40/34
The hardest downhill gear is 40/11

In both extremes of the gear range you are more limited than the 2x setup. Therefore you have to compensate with a bigger cassette such as 11-50 which will be heavier but give you an easier uphill gear of 40/50. You are still limited in the hardest gear to the same 40/11 which is why you see most speed focused roadies opt for 2x.

[TidyDinosaur]

Side note; I like the irony of chinertown convincing someone to buy shimano

Well, that is because we have all been there before, tried the cheap chinese groupset and found out the hard way that this is very false economy and you are better off getting Shimano or Sram.

My first groupset was the Sensah SRX Pro and after having spend days (literally days) getting everything to work and throwing money at it over and over, I for one have no interest of going that way again. My gravel bike now had GRX, my MTB SRAM X01 and both my road bike mechanical Ultegra.
If you shop around you can get those components new or as new for not much more than those Chinese groupsets. Setup is a lot easier and everything just works without having to spend entire weekends to get your brakes to work or the derailleur to shift.

[Serge_K]

Until I started ordering 4 bikes at a time to get some economies of scale and get my buddies involved, I often bought parts of eBay second hand. If you're in a country that has ebay, or equivalent, you can get stuff on the cheap, if you spend the time to understand what you're buying.
If you don't know jack, and don't feel like investing the time to understand parts, then get something new. I've recently installed 5 er9 groups and they're awesome, but probably out of your budget. I've ridden well over 20k km before switching to electronic anyway. There's a good chance the r9 is good too? I've had very mixed experience with sensah, I wouldn't recommend them (I've installed 4 groups and basically had problems on all of them).
If you buy 105 from a reputable shop, you probably can't go wrong. for a first build it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick the simple option even if it's not the cheapest option. Chinese carbon, you don't risk too much anymore. Chinese groupsets are still pretty exotic.

[TidyDinosaur]

2x11 speed Shimano groupsets are plenty on 2ndhand sites these days... You can get Ultegra 2x11 for 400-500EUR. I bought 2 last year and both looked like new.

Prices for the groupsets new have also declined so if you don't need the latest and greatest you can build a nice bike with 105 of Ultegra for a nice price....