Bike components, Gear reviews » Shimano CX70 top-pull front derailleur
Trying to run drop-bars and road bike shifters on an MTB can be tricky because road bike front derailleurs are all bottom pull, ie, not compatible with most MTBs.
The CX70 Shimano front derailleur has a top-pull option and works a treat. It comes in many guises and is especially built for Cyclo cross applications.
It comes in 34.9 and 31.8 clamp bands, plus braze-on. The 31.8 comes with a slightly ugly shim to take it down to 28.6.
I used it on my small Karate Monkey with 22/34 chain rings (and Durace 9 speed shifters) and it works brilliantly, so I would expect it to work even better with more appropriate sized rings, by that I mean typical 2 x 10 touring setups or Cyclo-cross sized front chain ring combos.
CX70 shimano cyclo cross double ring front deraillieur
May 8th, 2012 in
Bike components, Gear reviews
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I run this FD on my cyclocross bike currently (with sram rival shifters) to get around using a pulley and a bottom pull derailleur. I can’t say that it performs any better than any other FD I’ve had, but I don’t have any complaints either.
Does this give enough clearance to avoid using monkey nuts to space your wheel back? I recently added a Deore front derailleur to my Surly Ogre and I have to say that I prefer the way the bike handles on technical trails with the shorter, non monkey nutted wheelbase I enjoyed when I was running 1×9. Don’t worry about road vs. mountain FD cable pull differences – that’s a given. Thanks for any advice you can give!
I have never used the monkey nuts on mine, so with my particular model they are not needed.
Awesome, thanks for the feedback Jeff.