Does Ceramic Pulley Make Bike Easier

Someone should make a brand of bike components for bike geek commuters where you can buy ceramic bushing pulley wheels metal bodied road pedals and frames with full length external cabling external bottom brackets and 1 1 8th head sets.

Does ceramic pulley make bike easier. Our sram xx1 compatible 12 tooth pulley set can fit on shimano mountain bike derailleurs by changing a dust. Leading industry wheel dynamics expert and ceo of edco wheels paul lew backs this up and reckons it makes ceramic bearings a poor choice for hubs and headsets also adding that they offer no weight savings and are only beneficial in environments where high rpm revolutions per minute are required. For example kogel now offers 12 14t pulleys to fit directly into the latest 11 speed shimano road rear derailleurs and the company even has 14 14t pulleys to fit into 12 speed mountain bike. Recently we have been receiving an increasing amount of questions about oversize pulley wheels.

Makes total sense we follow sram s guidance and actually use a 14 tooth lower pulley on our sram eagle ceramic derailleur pulley set good looks. There are two main reasons for stepping away from the traditional 11 tooth derailleur. We are always ready for a bit of experimenting on our own bikes. For that little bit of extra speed fsa ceramic derailleur pulleys use low resistance long wearing silicon nitride ceramic hybrid bearings and pulley wheels made from durable dupont zytel.

Fitting ceramic bearings on your bike may be a bit like fitting a formula one gearbox in your ford fiesta and expecting it to perform as well after 100 000 miles. With the ceramicspeed osps system and kcnc s being very visible in the market and recently sram introducing a 14 tooth bottom pulley for their eagle derailleurs it sure is a trend that did not go unnoticed. For bottom bracket applications the maximum sustained rpm may be 130 explains lew. These pulleys will far outlast normal pulleys and are compatible with most derailleur systems including campagnolo 10t or shimano 11t.

On my bike however even with the b tension screw bottomed out the upper pulley contacted the 28 in the big ring. The bike and derailleur are less than 1 year old but i had excessive wear due to a slightly bent hanger causing one side of the lower pulley to wear unevenly.