Some will hate me for saying this, but the single ring drivetrain is not a fad, and seems to be here to stay across disciplines. That said, the industry at large has yet to embrace the idea of one-by road bike setups as a viable alternative to a more traditional wider range double chainring, and when you think of how most road bikes are used, it is with good reason. There are those out there though that believe in the benefits of a single front chainring on their road or cross rig. Unfortunately, options for wide range one-by road setups are still limited, which is where the hack-oriented minds at Lindarets and Wolf Tooth come in.
Wolf Tooth's RoadLink was designed to allow standard road rear derailleurs to handle a wider MTB-range cassette than they're supposed to. The Lindarets/Wolf Tooth Co-created TanPan allows a rider to run a Shimano road shifter with a Shimano MTB rear derailleur. Both ultimately accomplish the same thing, but which yields the best performance and value?
Wolf Tooth's RoadLink was designed to allow standard road rear derailleurs to handle a wider MTB-range cassette than they're supposed to. The Lindarets/Wolf Tooth Co-created TanPan allows a rider to run a Shimano road shifter with a Shimano MTB rear derailleur. Both ultimately accomplish the same thing, but which yields the best performance and value?
Wolf Tooth RoadLink - $21.95
My first cassette range extension attempt was facilitated by the RoadLink, a variant of Wolf Tooth's GoatLink (hence the goat icon) which accomplishes the same range extension for older style MTB derailleurs. Basically, the idea here is to widen the clearance between the top of the derailleur cage and the largest cassette sprocket by moving where the derailleur mounts onto the frame down a few centimeters.
According to Wolf Tooth's own published compatibility chart, with the RoadLink you can extend your range from Shimano's mid-cage supported 11-32t cassette, to a hefty 11-40t. If you want to save face in front of your more archaic roady pals, you can even keep a double-ring setup with the expanded range, though Wolf Tooth stipulates that this is only possible with chainrings that differ by 14 or fewer teeth.
This is a pretty awesome range extension for a $22 investment into your drivetrain (plus the cassette and whatever chainring adjustments you want to make of course), but how does it perform? It seems pretty ridiculous that slapping an extra bit of metal on your derailleur hanger constitutes anything other than a hack on a budget. So where's the compromise?
Using an Ultegra 6870 SS (short cage) derailleur 11-40t XT cassette on a 1x drivetrain, there was surprisingly little I noticed to indicate any performance issues while riding. The tiny little derailleur went up that cassette like the Little Engine that Could, not even hesitating with the big jump to the 40t cog that trips up most initial one-by setups. Going back down the cassette to the high gears was a different story. Fine tuning the cable tension to an acceptable level was exceedingly difficult, and lag in the chain dropping to smaller cogs was almost inevitable, which I attribute to the fact that with the RoadLink, the derailleur cage is too far away from the cassette to influence the chain's movement as effectively as it would in a normal setup, and no amount of finagling with the B-Tension on the derailleur could eliminate the problem. However, out on the trails when shifts happen fast and often range across several cogs at once, I very rarely noticed any performance issues from the drivetrain at all.
On its own then, the RoadLink is a super value, super worthy upgrade if you want to extend your road bike's range to absurdity.
Wolf Tooth/Lindarets Tanpan - $39.95 - $42.95
The Tanpan takes an entirely different approach from the RoadLink, but essentially accomplishes the exact same thing in terms of giving your drop bar shifters the power to shift across a much wider range cassette. Normally, a Shimano road shifter cannot be mated to a mountain bike derailleur, since they have different pull ratios. That is, a mountain bike shifter does not pull the same amount of cable with each shift as a road shifter, and therefore the derailleurs won't respond well to being pulled a different amount from what they're designed for. On the practical side of things, it makes indexing and adjusting the drivetrain impossible without huge compromises across the cassette.
The Tanpan is meant to modify the shifter's cable pull by wrapping it around what is essentially a directional pulley. These things have existed for years, mostly for SRAM/Shimano franken-bikes, but Wolf Tooth and Lindarets purpose built the Tanpan for Shimano road shifters to be paired with MTB derailleurs, for either 10 or 11 speed drivetrains. Since all you're messing with is the cable, installation is pretty simple; cable goes in, cable comes out the other side after a nice little loop-de-loop. What gets more complicated is cable routing, since the pulley shifts the cable about 120 degrees. This means trouble if your cable is supposed to run pretty close to the frame up to the entry point in the derailleur, since you'll have to finagle some weird angles out of your housing while maintaining smooth cable pull through it all.
Fortunately, Wolf Tooth now has an inline version to install the Tanpan in place of a standard barrel adjuster up by the handlebars, which may look a little goofy, but ultimately does the job and avoids the problems that I faced on my Trek Crockett with little slack in the cable housing to work with.
Performance wise, I have no complaints. The coolest thing about the Tanpan is that you get all of the mountain bike derailleur tech onto your Cross or Adventure rig, so for instance in my case, the XTR M9000 Clutch rear derailleur has minimized chain-slap pretty effectively, a huge benefit for Cross that most running current Shimano road drivetrains unfortunately miss out on. Shifts feel no different from when the bike was setup stock, but now I have a much greater range to bail out into and that extra little clutch definitely lets me hear the difference in chain security.
All that said, if you aren't looking to spend some money on a brand new mountain bike derailleur to make this upgrade official, I don't know that it really makes a whole lot of sense. If you're buying the Tanpan to match up with an SLX derailleur without the clutch mechanism for example, it would probably be more economical to opt for something less expensive like the RoadLink to modify your current drivetrain. In other words, unless you're changing over to some brand new MTB spec derailleurs hot of the Shimano Press, you should probably think twice about the Tanpan.
Summary
RoadLink
+
| -
|
Hyper-range at a hyper good price; an awesome quick and easy upgrade if you want some extra range on your road, Cross, or "Adventure" rig
PRICE: $21.95
Tanpan
+
| -
|
A neat solution if you have a spare MTB derailleur lying around, but probably not the most cost effective in terms of value and performance.
PRICE: $39.95-$42.95
The Final Verdict
So what's the difference? Essentially, the RoadLink just moves the derailleur a bit, while the Tanpan moves the cable to allow a different derailleur altogether. The advantage with the former is low cost, low hassle, while the former offers a more purpose built platform for executing the actual shifts, with more of the features inherent in a mountain bike specific derailleur (like say, a clutch system for chain retention).
Both of these options offer a good solution and great performance for the hacks that they ultimately are, so it comes down to a decision of value. For most, the RoadLink will do the trick and requires the least work in terms of swapping out parts on a stock bike. However, if a rear derailleur upgrade is in the cards and you don't mind the extra dough, the Tanpan offers more customization and the potential for more of the MTB world's derailleur features to trickle onto your Monster build. You can't go wrong with either option, but investment will be significantly higher in terms of parts and labor for the Tanpan.
Both of these options offer a good solution and great performance for the hacks that they ultimately are, so it comes down to a decision of value. For most, the RoadLink will do the trick and requires the least work in terms of swapping out parts on a stock bike. However, if a rear derailleur upgrade is in the cards and you don't mind the extra dough, the Tanpan offers more customization and the potential for more of the MTB world's derailleur features to trickle onto your Monster build. You can't go wrong with either option, but investment will be significantly higher in terms of parts and labor for the Tanpan.