9-51 Shimano cassette. 890% gear range GRX

Does it shift all the way up and down the cassette smoothly? I am skeptical… I want a video of this janky beast

I got a set up very similar to this working on a test rig recently. I was doing some product testing for some Chinese stuff.

The gearing was the 46/30 GRX crank, with a 10-50 in back, 11 speed.

It worked, it was fine. The problem was, it was simply *way* too much. 30-50 on a gravel bike was just stupid. Going up a hill, if felt like you were going to tip over you were moving so slow. What I found, was that I needed to just ratchet up my cadence to simply keep the bike upright. This problem got worse when loaded.

Now, why does this gearing work fine on a MTB? Well, because you are basically sitting on top of the rear wheel in that scenario, not so much on a gravel bike.

It was cool. The added range at the high end was nice. But that shit came off the bike pretty quick, and I advised against it. It’s way too much for this kind of bike.

Now, the older 10-40 cassette we saw on the 11 speed MTB stuff, *that* was the sweet spot for a double. The GRX 11 sp 2x system can handle this natively, without any fuckery.

If something like this interests you, I’d stop there.

Edit: No way in hell a Shimano system can accommodate this amount of chain wrap, no way. I don’t know what the plan is here, but I can tell you right now, if you plan is to use unmodified componentry, this is not going to work, and it wont be close.

Modern GRX capacity is 40t and 41t, 1x and 2x.

but why? i’m curious where you’re riding. i never need such big range.

I had been waiting for someone to do this. I was concerned about the 13-16-18 jumps. What does that feel like in practice?

I need more info…. that shit is perfect for loaded touring…

How did you make the grx 2x RD to shift up a 51t?

Someone send this to pathlesspedaled