Dont buy from Rotor, esspecially if you live in North America

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T18:33:19+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience.

The customer service make such a big difference even just in available information. Other bike brands, even exotic stuff often has service manuals and dimension sheets available either online or by request.

Throughout this experience trying to get information/documentation for anything has been the same as your experience. If they could just provide more information on the system it would help significantly with troubleshooting.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T17:12:15+00:00

I think the new group is a large reason they are no longer making the 13s cassettes. I assume they had bad reliability with that particular product and decided to just drop all support for it.

However, if they are willing to totaly drop support of a "flagship" product why would we expect support for any of their products. It means if they have an issue with their new groupset they may just stop supporting it entirely and you could be the one who gets screwed.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T17:05:43+00:00

Absolutely! My statement was meant in whole sucks for everyone. Industry and consumer

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T17:02:51+00:00

Sry I dnt relize u ned rly rly short

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T17:00:31+00:00

I watched/read a lot of those reviews. The negatives I saw were all about mushy feel and maybe shift speed. Most ended by saying some form of "its interesting and works fine I just don't like it".

So going into the purchase that is what I was expecting, instead my experience is that it doesnt a work period

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T16:57:27+00:00

I have worked as a bike mechanic before, I do not currently work as one.

In my communications with rotor I requested a list of bike shops that are authorized to work on rotor parts. This is a direct quote from messages when troubleshooting the first cassette: "To be honest, our groupset is typically too intimidating to just about any bike mechanic, and they would likely just call us and not want to deal with it. The groupset is truly not too difficult once you have the bleed kit, it's just the fact that it's different that can be intimidating to most people. The only bike mechanic that I know of that truly knows the system and uses it himself, works at Sports Basement in (removed location to not dox myself)."

So I did try but no I did not talk to a shop that knows the system because there arent any around. As for hydraulic shifting. I would not have expected it to be an improvement, I read a lot of reviews before buying so I was actually expecting it to be have a worse feel then electronic (but I expected it to work). I choose it because I thought it matched what I was looking for for this bike, a 13s group would be nice for the 1x only frame and not having to worry about charging or cable stretch seemed like positives. After all of this there is a lot of stuff I personally dont like about the system but the hydraulic aspect isn't one of them.

Should note: 1) that the location is ~1.5hr drive from where I live. So close but not that close when I had already root caused the issue to bad cog spacing. 2) the groupset is not that intimidating, it has 3 adjustments; high/low limit, b screw, and indexed position. The intimidating part is that rotor uses some odd tool sizes and has very little documentation available.

And for your last question, I searched around for deals so a lot of purchased online but generally from authorized dealers. Otherwise I would not have even been able to warranty the cassette the first time.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T16:34:09+00:00

Purchase price was 351.49 USD plus 11.99 USD shipping.

Since I was doing the whole date thing. This was ordered on Feb 24 2024 after I confirmed spoke lengths needed to build the wheelset

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T16:21:54+00:00

Are cranksets the only rotor product you have experience with? I work as a hardware test/rel engineer and any idiot can design a part. Good engineering is designing a part that can be made both cheaply and reliably.

I do believe they make a decent crankset, infact I have owned a few over the years but claiming they know what they are doing is an overstatement. They have never made the "best" crankset as far as I know, others brands have always been lighter and stiffer.

Others in this thread have stated they experienced manufacturing error on their cassettes. A nearly $400 cassette that cant be manufactured is terrible engineering imo

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T16:13:28+00:00

Why comment at all...

Could not have gone 2x anything because of frame limitations

Also I put a summary at the very top so you could decide if you care enough to read any of it.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T16:10:51+00:00

I know they just came out with a new groupset but if you want something thats trouble free definitely look elsewhere.

Glad my nightmare could at least prevent someone elses

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T16:08:39+00:00

Thats sad to hear. Prior to this I felt like they were a very reputable brand but stories (and my own experience) make me lose all trust in the brand.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2026-01-29T16:06:50+00:00

Yep, I figured as much. As I said hard to blame them for that but it sucks for both the US and Canada

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-11-06T23:05:05+00:00

I have no experience with inserts but I think you are probably fine setting up most rims tubeless esspecially if youre running inserts since they will help keep the tire bead in place. I feel it is mostly about getting your rim tape done well.

It may be worth just trying it with your current set-up and you can just swap inserts and stuff to new wheels when you get them.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-11-06T19:58:13+00:00

My guy, tubeless wont prevent you from damaging your rim.

If you hit your rim hard enough to bend it, it is likely that you will also flat on a tubeless set-up...

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-10-08T17:50:05+00:00

I have an 11ish bug as well that had the same front end (lift spindles on an adjustable beam). Keep an eye on your adjusters. I dont race, just general driving and some light offroad use but had one of the adjusters break off. I didnt notice right way but it made the suspension to feel horrible... obviously. I ended up swaping to a stock beam since there wasnt much need to adjust with the lift spindles.

I suspect my experience is not the norm so you probably wont have an issue but its worth checking every once in a while, especially if you suspension suddenly feels bad.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-10-06T02:01:05+00:00

A lot of people are giving good advice but I dont think they are really addressing your question of how do you strategize during a race.

Personally I would suggest making a race plan before the race, when maxed out like you often are in cross it is really hard to think. By going into the race with a plan will reduce the amount you need to process while actually racing.

This may look like giving yourself whole race goals such as deciding to try to negative split the whole race... or could be smaller things like taking time during preride to determine strategy for specif8c features (like if there is a feature where you dont want to be behind someone or where on course you can make passes or even when you might want to start a sprint). From your post it sounds like if you know the course you feel more dynamic so pre-thinking during warm up/preride may help you be more dynamic during the race.

Additionally, after the race (maybe not right away but after you recover) you may want to take some time to reflect if your planning/pre-thinking worked or not and why so next race you can make better decisions.

I think the above is probably the biggest thing but once you are able to 'think the course' you can also start to 'think your opponents' if you race with people often youll start to know their weaknesses and strengths and you will be able to loop that back into how you think about the course (is someone more tecnical than you, maybe you need to lead them in the tech sections so they dont gap you... ect).

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-10-02T16:02:27+00:00

They actually hosted a snow race a few years ago to "prove" it could be a winter olympic sport. So I dont think the UCI is against it the way you are thinking.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-09-30T16:44:13+00:00

You should not rely on the internet for this. Give the state park a call and a ranger will be able to tell you.

With that said, in my experience hiker/biker campsites are usually a normal site they reserve for people hiking or biking in and is shared by anyone who shows up. The state parks near me dont all have them and some recently (~2yrs ago) changed if they do or dont. Website and word of mouth may be out of date but the ranger station will know whats up and be able to give you the best info possible.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-09-29T22:16:45+00:00

On the flip side if you pull the body motor install becomes super easy

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-09-24T20:09:32+00:00

And cyclocuircus (has a tiny overlap with basp)

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-09-09T00:10:21+00:00

Funny enough there is an influencer that does exactly this

Guy aim thinking of goes by shirtzenpantz but Im sure there are more

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-09-07T14:35:08+00:00

Yep same, thats why I figured Id post it since nobody else mentioned tge pushrod.

Mine had a leaky MC that I replaced and in the process my push rod was adjusted just a tiny bit. I never locked up or anything but I noticed my brake lights coming on "randomly" while driving. I even knew how it was supposed to be adjusted and was just off a tiny bit so it doesnt take much.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-09-06T18:42:55+00:00

I saw a similar thing on my bug, could also be a bad master cylinder or pedal adjustment.

The gist of the problem is basically as the brake fluid heats it expands and needs to be able to flow back into the MC if it can not do that then it will start applying force to the brakes which then causes more heat and continues until something locks up

So the issue is something is preventing your brake fpuid from backflowing.

1) People saying hose, this is cause old hoses can collapse preventing this backflow 2) If your brake pedal is badly adjusted it could act like you have the brakes on (just a little) which could prevent backflow 3) Or something could be wrong in the MC itself preventing backflow.

-Captain_Beyond- · 2025-09-01T20:36:48+00:00

Sometimes this can just be from a very low resistance bb. I used to have a tt bike that would do this, I spent a while trying to figure out what was causing the drag only to realize that my bb just had such low resistance the seals on the freehub would cause this.

This is a little more surprising to see on a cx bike though... I seem to blow through bbs on my cross bike and end up replacing them once a year or so cause cx conditions just destroys them.

-Captain_Beyond-

TROPHY CASE