Dan Dialogue
New Member
My 1x11 conversion started last Christmas when my family bought me a 125mm Brand X dropper post for my 2016 Bulls E-Stream EVO FS3 27.5. I’ve got a Fox Transfer post on my Cannondale Trigger and it’s awesome. A dropper post is one of those items that you truly appreciate and cannot live without once you’ve ridden with one. At least, that’s the case with me.
I was really excited about it until I realized that there’s no room on the bars for the lever. With the shift lever for the front derailleur and the Brose controller, real estate is at a premium. Since I wanted my Bulls setup to be similar to my Cannondale, I wanted to keep the dropper post lever in the same position on the bars. I’ve seen some of the other dropper post installs here on the forum and I preferred a different cable route and lever placement. Since my dropper post is internally routed, I needed space to run the cable to keep things tidy. That meant the front derailleur, cable and shift lever had to go.
After removing the shift lever, cable and derailleur, the post install went fairly smooth. It wasn’t until I removed the crank arm that the fun, err, confusion started. The right crank arm comes off with a regular crank arm puller. Underneath is a large nut holding the spider on the spindle and requires a special tool that I don’t own so I gently used a screwdriver and a dead-blow hammer to remove the nut. As it turns out, it wasn’t on very tight and took little effort to remove.
Here's the nut:
Once removed, the spider has a large octagonal pattern that matches that of the spindle. Maybe I’m naive, but I’ve never seen that before. I let my fingers do the Googling and went that produced no results, I turned to FSA.
I was able to make contact with FSA about a new chain ring and/or spider that would be a direct bolt on and they were very responsive. However, after showing them a picture of what I had, they said they hadn’t seen that type of mount and they didn’t offer anything that would fit, sigh. They recommended contacting Bulls. In hindsight, I probably should have done that first, but I figured the spindle would be the same as regular bikes and since the cranks are made by FSA…well, there you go.
I reached out to Court and he got me in touch with Barney at Bulls. Barney was very responsive and after learning about want I wanted to do, he did some research for me. As it turns out, the 2x spider used on my bike is the same spider that Bulls uses for their other bikes that run a 1x setup.
Problem solved. Barney even went so far as to reach out to Brose and verify that the chain line would still be okay.
I removed both chain rings and replaced just the big ring with a 1x specific chain ring (narrow/wide teeth and 104BCD) from Amazon and theoretically I shouldn’t need a chain guide. Time will tell and even though it was a bit of a headache, my 1x11 conversion is done and ready to ride. Best of all, it looks like it was designed that way.
The finished product(s):
Dropper lever right next to my shiny new controller
Dropper post and cable routing
And of course, the 1x11.
I big shoutout to Court, Barney w/ Bulls and Brian at FSA for your help!
Now if Mother Nature would only cooperate…
I was really excited about it until I realized that there’s no room on the bars for the lever. With the shift lever for the front derailleur and the Brose controller, real estate is at a premium. Since I wanted my Bulls setup to be similar to my Cannondale, I wanted to keep the dropper post lever in the same position on the bars. I’ve seen some of the other dropper post installs here on the forum and I preferred a different cable route and lever placement. Since my dropper post is internally routed, I needed space to run the cable to keep things tidy. That meant the front derailleur, cable and shift lever had to go.
After removing the shift lever, cable and derailleur, the post install went fairly smooth. It wasn’t until I removed the crank arm that the fun, err, confusion started. The right crank arm comes off with a regular crank arm puller. Underneath is a large nut holding the spider on the spindle and requires a special tool that I don’t own so I gently used a screwdriver and a dead-blow hammer to remove the nut. As it turns out, it wasn’t on very tight and took little effort to remove.
Here's the nut:
Once removed, the spider has a large octagonal pattern that matches that of the spindle. Maybe I’m naive, but I’ve never seen that before. I let my fingers do the Googling and went that produced no results, I turned to FSA.
I was able to make contact with FSA about a new chain ring and/or spider that would be a direct bolt on and they were very responsive. However, after showing them a picture of what I had, they said they hadn’t seen that type of mount and they didn’t offer anything that would fit, sigh. They recommended contacting Bulls. In hindsight, I probably should have done that first, but I figured the spindle would be the same as regular bikes and since the cranks are made by FSA…well, there you go.
I reached out to Court and he got me in touch with Barney at Bulls. Barney was very responsive and after learning about want I wanted to do, he did some research for me. As it turns out, the 2x spider used on my bike is the same spider that Bulls uses for their other bikes that run a 1x setup.
Problem solved. Barney even went so far as to reach out to Brose and verify that the chain line would still be okay.
I removed both chain rings and replaced just the big ring with a 1x specific chain ring (narrow/wide teeth and 104BCD) from Amazon and theoretically I shouldn’t need a chain guide. Time will tell and even though it was a bit of a headache, my 1x11 conversion is done and ready to ride. Best of all, it looks like it was designed that way.
The finished product(s):
Dropper lever right next to my shiny new controller
Dropper post and cable routing
And of course, the 1x11.
I big shoutout to Court, Barney w/ Bulls and Brian at FSA for your help!
Now if Mother Nature would only cooperate…
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Any suggestions on a chain guide? Still concerned about dropping my chain which has happened to me before. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
