Ethirteen aftermarket cassette - really compatible?

Tech Tech Help
, ,
1

I’ve been running an ethirteen aftermarket cassette on my Lauf Siegla. It’s this one - Helix Race 12-Speed 9-45T Cassette – ethirteen

These are actually sold by Lauf also, so they are tacitly recommending them as an easy way to get your range up by 13% above the stock 10-44 by sneaking in a tooth at either end. They work well.

My chain got to 0.5% stretch recently so I replaced it….only to find that the cassette is cactus. It slipped initially, but wore in, but the shifting is poor and almost unusable in the centre of the steel part of the block….exactly the area which will have had the most use and a telltale sign of wear. I’m kinda annoyed of course, this is a USD 329 / AUD 550 item and has lasted around only 4000-5000km.

I run wax on my chains and keep them clean, I would expect to get 3 chains out of a cassette. I’m light and low power, so its normal for me to get 15,000+ from a cassette. If I put the old chain on everything is fine (and I’ll probably have to do that now).

ethirteen say the cassette is SRAM flat top compatible, but it also appears to say its Shimano 12 speed compatible, which got me wondering….how can it be compatible with SRAM flat top and Shimano 12 speed when the roller sizes and spacing are different?

Is it ‘compatible’ but subject to much more intense wear?

2

The casettes just don’t last and shift great. No matter what chain you use, it is just a bad product.

3

As I replied in a different forum - with chain waxing I have over 10k miles on a cassette and chain combo and still showing <.25% wear (on an Abbey LL chain checker.) Shifting is great - just as good as other bikes with a SRAM cassette. So I fully believe it won’t last as long as a SRAM cassette, with proper care they can last pretty well.

Side note - to get the shifting to work well it required a lot of extra B-tension - definitly not set up how SRAM would recommend with their cassettes.

4

Thanks Ned!