Ultegra or 105

[Mk1 Geoff]

Hello all,

After some advise. I'm building my first road bike and am after suggestions for what group set to use. Just purchased a 2012 Cube Peloton Race frame. I want to build it into something half decent but without spending a fortune on it. It will be a fair weather only bike for leisure/fitness only. My previous bike was a Boardman Hybrid Team so want it to be an upgrade over that.
I'm thinking either Ultrgra 6700/6800 or 105 5700/5800 group set. Being my first proper road bike I have no experience of either. Would I notice much difference between them or should I go 105 5700 and spend more on wheels / finishing kit?

Any thoughts greatly appreciated?

Geoff

 

[mattr]

Depends how long you want to keep it. 11 speed 5/6800 parts will be available for a good while. Decent 10 speed will probably start being phased out in 5 or so years. It's one of the reasons i upgraded my training bike from 9 to10 and the race bike from 9 to 11. Couldn't get decent 9 speed parts easily. Most of it was on eBay, and quite a lot of it was knackered.

As for the workings, I've used both 5800/6800 and 5700/6700 and from a user point of view, the differences get smaller every generation. It's just the durability, i find the expensive bits (shifters) from the higher groups last longer. The rest, it depends.

If just get the latest 105 and better wheels/kit, you'll notice far more difference there than you will on a groupset.

(As an alternative, get a full 105 group and ultegra shifters. Thats a good way to get "free" performance, I've done it on many builds)

 

[Mk1 Geoff]

Re:

Many thanks for the reply. Very helpful. I plan on keeping the bike for a long time. The 105 with Ultrgra shifters sounds like a good option. I'm assuming that 5800 and 6800 can be mixed together. How about mixing 5/6700 with 5/6800?

 

[mattr]

TBH, theres not much point in mixing x7xx with x8xx. The rear mech, shifters, chain, rear hub and cassette all need to be the same (11 speed). Fairly sure the front mech will have to be right too. Even if it doesn't, the new x8xx mechs are f**king brilliant, and the last generation ones were pretty damn good. So for the few quid price difference, i'd get 11 speed anyway. The front shift on the new stuff feels *almost* as good as a rear shift of maybe 10 years ago........ can even do full power shifting small to large with a minimum of fuss......

Chainset you can live with 10 speed/x7xx if you want, it's backwards compatible.
x7xx and x8xx brakes have slightly different pull ratios, so they'll work together, but not as well as a matched set.

So using x7xx where you can instead of x8xx might only save you something like 50 quid, and it probably won't work as well as it should.

And when you look at the prices of full groupsets from some of the mail order places........ :shock: hardly worth the effort of searching through the catalogue for the bits.......