my impressions
both companies make good products
but shimano make great products
I work for a major (in the top 10) bike shop, we sell 30 plus custom bikes a month in the winter, and not crap, (intense, turner, ellsworth, foes, yeti, moots)
I been a professional mechanic for 18 years in one of the nations better areas for the sport the southwest
I'm telling you my experience, in order to explain the good great comment.
I've seem all manner of off road components, from campy (record OR), suntour, sachs, shimano, and various other random makes so i've seen crappy, good and great come and go
I would love to declare SRAM the winner and and wave the flag and hold up a beer to our chicago bros in salute. problem is they've yet to impress me.
Some history:
SRAM/Shimano used to be the coke vs. pepsi debate, but sram lost that battle
you use to have to use bass worms, gore cables, accessory spring upgrades for derailleurs, just to get SRAM gripshift to work for any reasonable time and they were fragile. meanwhile little sachs made a twist shifer that worked but was little known.
sram didn't improve they bought sachs for the shifter and chains, and did the bike industry a disservice by killing off the one really good source of freewheels for older bikes
on another front where they lost in my book is that theyre falling all over themselves (including patent infringement) to make triggers, after spending years telling us twist was superior.
they claim their push push trigger is better than shimano push pull, conveniently forgetting shimano invented that years ago it was called rapidfire (push push) as opposed to the current rapidfire plus (push pull) shimano is sueing and SRAM has to place the levers awkwardly to keep from looking like outright copycats. (you should see them squirm at interbike at the mere mention of taking the adjustable lever and putting it under the trigger on the x.o)
their front derailleur is not up to the level they need to be
we get a lot of DOA components, and the rear derailleurs break more often.
but they do work well they just need a lot of time to evolve to the refinement XTR has, but XTR is more expensive, and every few years shimano decides to push crap on us like low normal/rapidrise.
the best mechanic in any of your areas can make either group sing and last
the worst mechanics can have more success with SRAM because the 1:1 ratio is more tolerant of maladjustment
SRAM chainusers wreck their drivetrains more often because of a false sense of security from the power link, as if putting the chain through a weekly degreasing regiment makes it last longer, and they alway forget about chain stretch, and hang on to their $50 pc-991's like their gold. I prefer to think of my chains as disposable and put a new $30 XTR chain on at least 3 time a year, and i save money on cassettes and chainrings.
lets hope SRAM keeps pushing 'cuz theyve made great strides, but theyre not quite there
in my opinion
discuss
