disappearing groupsets!

[retrobikeguy]

We all have an era of Shimano, Suntour and so on that we love, but some groupsets just seem to be disappearing, me I was always in awe of the exage trail groupset, I remember seeing it on a Raleigh mirage in 3As cycles in acomb, it was the beez neez to me, plus a mate had it on his tufftrax .... Which was also cool but it was the groupset that I thought was cool. My point is that it seems really hard to find this stuff now compared to DX or XT that is everywhere, this was affordable for the masses and yet I see very little of the exage mountain, ES, LT, 500LX.... Suntour stuff is even harder to find :|

So who here misses this rarer than ringle stuff that many of us started with?

 

[MR OX]

Re:

I still have a fair amount of 300 / 400 / 500 lx stuff, all my spare exage trail went with a bike fitted with it last year.

 

[@dalbyinthe90s]

Exage was on my first decent mountain bike - a GT tequesta that my parents bought for my birthday in 1993.

Apart from the fact my heart was set on a GT by then, the groupset stood out in the shop because it looked high end, even though it was entry/mid level. In use, it was great quality, if a bit heavy here and there.

I reckon these groupsets might be gone because they were never on expensive enough bikes to be loved and maintained for a very long time.

As a side, Ive noticed retro xtr stuff for sale often looks way more hammered than some of the
Lx and xt kit. Xtr seems to be either very expensive nos or still quite pricey shot to bits.

 

[xxnick1975]

So true. Some real forgotten heros out there.

Suntour xce/xcm/xcd... all good stuff but no love unlike xcpro/xc9000

And poor old Devore lx/550 - what a grouppo that wAs!

 

[@dalbyinthe90s]

Re:

Remember Sachs? Lovely looking groupset in the mid 90s but shimano had just moved on leaps and bounds when it was launched. I've just bought some nos Sachs cranks for my RTS.

 

[jimo746]

Re:

I recently tried selling some Suntour XCE stuff, (almost) couldn't give it away!
Not sure how many years groups like Exage Mountain/Trail etc were available for? But I quite like that stuff, it can be quirky.
I guess as it was lower End it quietly rusted away and was just dumped.
Conversely, 200GS went through a couple of variations and still seems to be common as muck today, plastic doesn't rust you see

 

[ishaw]

Re:

My first proper mountain bike, a raleigh cajun 531 frame/fork with lovely blue/turquoise/white fade came with something like exage trail/mountain groupset. Was a lovely bike, never seen another. Everything worked and never failed.

Stx was another groupset that was solid, worked and ran for ages. Same of the 7 speed black lx which imho worked better than m900.

 

[brocklanders023]

Re:

Problem with some of it was that it only appeared for a year or so. The 1993 Exage stuff looked ace imo but was one year only. Mountain LX was short lived but was basically the LX that lived for 3 years. DX the same, classic but virtually unchanged for 4 or so years, just like M730/2/5 XT.

 

[fearfactoryüberalles]

Exage was a touring-oriented groupset, and when bulletproof old-school Sh. build-quality went south, they offered the CX range instead, with still some pretty albeit weird looking parts.

100-200GS stuff is hard as coffin nails, they're gonna fight till' their last breath :twisted:

M560 LX set (7-8 sp.) offered XT weight and similar performance for about half the price. For example: ST-M567 STI 8 sp. weight : 335 gr., M737 XT STI: about 385 gr. weight :shock:

9 sp. M570 was quite a step backward in the aspect of price/performance/longevity, and looked rather mis-matched/plasticky anyway.

STX was too cheaply/nastily and heavily built for the price, esp. the rear/front mechs, chainset with silly chainring variants, but certain parts of it were OK. Shimano went too far regarding the cost-effectiveness with that group and to save face they quickly introduced the much nicer STX-RC set, which became best-buy even for racers.

So STX-RC is also the unsung hero of that era, nice polished finish and lasts for ages too, can be tuned also to weights of XT stuff & beyond.

No wonder Deore DX pops up still often though, oldschool XT quality or even more durable, without the snobbery factor :twisted:

 

[shogun]

STX-RC's sole saving grace over the first generation of STX was solely that the cast alloy outer parallelogram plates lasted a bit longer before they went all floppy jalopy compared to the stamped steel ones.

Exage was junk made for cheap OEM supply. Much of it was plastic. None of it was durable...well, it wouldn't break, but it wouldn't work well for long. Good riddance.

DX was a sound groupset but M56x LX basically took over from it. M560-M563 LX were excellent, workmanlike groupsets.