This is coming out because I just bought the heavily discounted S-Works Crux last weekend. My drivetrain will soon be the old model, and I figure there’s a new Crux coming soon too with the direct mount RD. Was still a great buy for the price, but I wondered what was coming when I saw those big price reductions.
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I thought I saw there was a UDH conversion kit made available for Diverge/Crux/Roubaix
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You did
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Nice! Thanks to you both!
Do we know gearing (or at least largest cog) on that new cassette? Surely someone has analyzed the photos to figure it out. Curious if they’re expanding the range of XPLR or adding cogs to reduce the size of jumps between gears.
From the Article with the pictures
Transmission aside, and that is a 13th cog. I got close enough to count the rings of the cassette myself, and sure enough, there are 13 cogs in the back with the largest being a 46t.
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Are folks excited by a 46t? I’d like more than 10-44 without upgrading to a mullet, but 2 more teeth doesn’t excite me. I also don’t prioritize closer gearing on my gravel bike.
I went straight from 10-44 XPLR to 10-52 Eagle cassette. 12 speed mullet for the win.
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There more pictures on the Escape collective, they also mention in the artical a new Crux UDH and Trek Checkpoint UDH
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I think it’s a solid addition. I wouldn’t necessarily want more range as much as I would want something like their 12s 10-36 with an added bail gear.
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Having just bought one last year I feel your pain. However seems like its the same frame but they just added UDH. I don’t care much about the extra gear, so will wait and see what shakes out.
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$1500 for 1 more cog? I think I’ll pass on this one. 
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That’s with an XX derailleur and cassette
Why are you so sure this won’t be the red xplr cassette? I agree while there is no confirmation it is, there is also none that it isn’t, the rD is definitely not a mtb and the 13 spd cassette is also definitely not a xxsl, it’s most likely than not the red xplr otherwise what would that be?
I agree, I think I made a howler in my original comments as it looks identical to the xxsl, even down to the red dampening ring (best seen in the escape back pictures)
XX SL
New Red
Rather than the flat back panel of the current XPLR with, but you are right, it can’t be a MTB casette, it’s to small, and no MTB casette is 13 speed, also the XXSL even though it’s bigger than the the current Red XPLR, is lighter … so I’m going to guess, this is trickle across technology,
Anyway, that was a really long way of saying … I was completely wrong
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Yeah its tempting for me. My first electronic bike is my SL8 Tarmac with Ultegra Di2 and I’m not blown away by the performance of it in general and find the FD doesn’t always shift when I want (it sounds like some of that may be due to it not allowing you to cross chain, which I think I have the habit of doing when hitting the crest of a hill and could do with 11spd mech 105).
Comparing to my 11 spd GRX 2x, I was leaning more towards 40 or 42 to 10-45, as I do find myself in gravel races getting into my 30-34 ( or within a cog or two of it) on long steep climbs, so didn’t want to lose much of the low end.
My biggest issue with my current 2x GRX gearing is I find the 46T is generally too much for CX and the 30T is not enough, so I switch back and forth between the 2 rings and am generally mostly cross chained one way or the other. a 38-42T would be way better gearing even with my current 11-34 cassette for CX but would obviously be even better with 11-40 or 10-44/45/46.
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How is the shifting? I’ve heard complaints that it has skipping issues.
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So far so good, but I don’t have a lot of runtime on it yet.
With the pros running bigger and bigger front rings and 13 speed most likely needing to move the big cog inwards chain line is going to get worse. Then everyone wants to go 50+mm with the tires? I wonder if they’re going to have to spin a wider XPLR rear hub spacing? You saw it here first - XPLR SuperDub, a 156.999 rear hub.
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This is likely also 55mm chainline, not sure how much this could help
Good video from Ben Delaney, but I’m questioning the 13spd specific chainring he guesses
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