Shimano upgrade

blueboy

Dirt Disciple
He'll folks pardon the ignorance as this as been probably been asked numerous times. I,m currently riding a cannondale sl four with acera shifters and front mech together with an Alvio rear derailleur.I,ve looked at shimano compatability chart and can,t make head nor tail of it.I intend to upgrade the drive train bit by bit , possibly deore.Question is will deore work with acera and Alvio until I can afford to change each piece.Also will different deore variants work together.All I currently know is that they,ll obviously have to be same speed.Cheers in advance for any advice.
 
If your current cassette (the cogs on the back wheel) has 8 sprockets then your options are wide as any 8/9/10 speed cassette will fit...

If you have 7 back there then you still have options (though you would have to change the freehub body if you want to go to more gears).

Shimano stuff is pretty cross-compatible between sets - the only things that definately won't work are 6-speed with anything higher (sprocket spacing differences) and 10-speed/dyna-sys with anything lower (this is down to the amount of cable pull required to move between the gears) - you could use a 9 or 8 speed shifter with a mech/cassette with less for example (or the other way around but you may lose access to one or more cogs on the cassette), My wife's bike has 7-speed shifters with an 8-speed cassette and 9-speed XT rear mech (thumb shifters have an extra "click" over the number needed).

I know I'm massively over-simplifying here but I've no idea what your knowledge level is (I'm sure others will chime in and say I've overgeneralised on the lower sprocket count stuff too!)
 
The Alivio mech of recent years isn't a bad device, if a little weighty, so no harm keeping that til it expires. Acres shifters are awful though, a real clunkfest, well worth upgrading to LX or SLX.

Most 7 speed mechs will stretch to 8 speed, 8 to 9. A 9 speed mech will index up to 8 or 7, no probs.

10 speed is largely incompatible with everything else. There are a few exceptions but the combinations are so unlikely it's safest to forget it.

The above is all for Shimano of course. A lot of SRAM, Suntour or Crapag (sic) isn't cross compatible and you could write a book on what combo will or won't work with what.
 
Cheers for that,at the moment with the bike being new everything does feel a bit agricultural I suppose it will till its bedded in but I agree the shifters are a bit clunky .Is there much difference between lx and slx ? Is it just a case of weight difference and is it worth the difference performance wise.
Cheers
 
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