Groupset

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A groupset or gruppo (from the Italian for "group", often misspelled grouppo) is a bicycle component manufacturer's organized collection of mechanical parts. It generally refers to all of the components that make up a bicycle excluding the bicycle frame, fork, stem, wheels, tires, and rider contact points, such as the saddle and handlebars.

These parts typically include some of the following:

2 gear levers or shifters and
2 brake levers or
2 integrated brake levers/shifters
2 brake calipers, front and rear
2 derailleurs, front and rear
1 headset
1 bottom bracket
1 crankset
1 chain
1 cassette
1 seatpost
2 hubs, front and rear
assorted cables and cable housing.

The typical modern road groupset bought after-market (as an upgrade to an older bike, or for someone building there own, usually only consists of:

integrated shift/brake levers (pair)
brake calipers (pair)
cassette
chain
cables and cable housing required for brake and gear cables
crankset
bottom bracket - the part which hold the cranks to the frame, and contains the bearings on which they spin

NB the combination of bottom bracket/crankset can vary depending on the design of these parts, usually the bottom bracket is kept separate so that it can be changed when the bearings start to wear, without replacing the entire item

The major groupset manufacturers are Shimano and Campagnolo for racing bicycles, and Shimano and SRAM for mountain bikes. In 2006, SRAM also released two groupsets for racing bicycles, aimed at competing with Shimano and Campagnolo's offerings.

Manufacturers typically offer several groupsets, each targeted at a different budget or use. For instance, Dura-Ace and Record are the top-of-the-line road racing groupsets for Shimano and Campagnolo, respectively. The announced SRAM groups will be named 'Force' and 'Rival', being the pro-level and amateur racing level lines, respectively.

[edit] List of Groupsets for 2007

Below is a list of three current manufacturer's groupsets for Road and MTB applications, each manufacturers offering are arranged in descending quality. The number of gears on the cassette that each groupset is designed to take is shown in brackets.

This is often referred to as "10-speed" or "9-speed", in reality the number of gears available is determined by this number multiplied by the number of chainrings, for example a bike set up to take a double chainring and a 10-speed cassette can be said to have 20 gears, however several of the combinations may overlap or may not be reachable due to the crossover of the chain.

Road

Shimano - 2007