Found: Interloc Racing Designs’ 11-42 wide range mountain bike, cyclocross cassettes

Written by Tyler Benedict May 16, 2015 11:59 a.m. ET

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The wide range mountain bike cassette options just keep rolling in, bringing more choices at more price points. So far we’ve seen models from Praxis, SunRace, Hope, Edco, Microshift, SEQlite and Trickstuff…and newer versions from SRAM and Shimano. And that doesn’t even count all the hop up kits to mod your existing cassette.

Now we’ve found a number of options from IRD, including this 11-42 and an 11-40 topping the spread. It’s compatible with standard SRAM and Shimano SGS speed rear derailleurs, and they’ve got options for both 10-speed and 11-speed. That means less expensive upgrades as long as your rear wheel’s freehub body will fit an 11-speed cassette if you’re going for the extra cog. Otherwise, the 10-speed versions make for an easy 1×10 conversion without losing too much range.

They also make an 11-36 (shown directly above) and many, many more (below), and street prices are around $160 or less. Weights range from about 300g to 450g depending on size. All use nickel chrome plated cogs on an alloy spider, which means a big extra weight but improved durability on the largest cogs compared to the alloy versions on so many other brands.

InterlocRacing.com

Tyler Benedict

11,203 articles

Tyler Benedict is the Founder of Bikerumor.com. He has been writing about the latest bikes, components, and cycling technology for almost two decades. Prior to that, Tyler launched and built multiple sports nutrition brands and consumer goods companies, mostly as an excuse to travel to killer riding locations throughout North America.

Based in North Carolina, Tyler loves family adventure travel and is always on the lookout for the next shiny new part to make his bikes faster and lighter.

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delquattro

8 years ago

Looking forward to 11x38s and 11x40s hitting the market.

timbo

8 years ago

Looks like good products and we want to buy them. But, despite two emails, and phone calls to them and their UK distributors, no-one has contacted us to sell us some.

Do they really exist?

ChrisW

8 years ago

Does anyone know whether their larger cassettes are like the Shimano 11-speed MTB cassettes, and so fit on a standard 10-speed freehub body, or do they all require an 11-speed Shimano body? I’d love to see an 11-speed 11-36, or 12-36, which fits on a Shimano 10-speed body to put on our tandem; with the hub’s 145mm OLD the spoke angle is more than enough to keep the derailleur away from the spokes when on the 36-tooth cog.

Veganpotter

8 years ago

I’d love an 11-30 for my road bike. I have no problems having a SRAM RED 11-30 on my racing wheels but I don’t want to train on an expensive cassette that could otherwise last me years and years. I just wish their cassettes weren’t super heavy. I’m far from a weight weenie…I have SRAM RED22 shifters and rear derailleur on my bike and I’m more than happy to throw a 105 cassette on, and I have heavy octalink cranks for ease of travel(coupled bike). But these cassettes really are STUPID HEAVY. Meaning, I can’t even figure out where the weight is. They are cheaper but not cheap enough to make up for that mass

Durianrider

8 years ago

@veganpotter I reckon I travel more internationally with my bikes than you and I just run standard frames with DA9000 or sram red.

Come on bro its 2015! hehe.

Durianrider

8 years ago

@veganpotter, what RD’s would the 42 work with you reckon?

10spd shimano road shifters. I know the hack for 11spd but not 10.

iperov

8 years ago

mountain? I have no time to shift 11,12,13,15,17 ….

chasejj

8 years ago

Durian/Vegan- The road hack for 10spd cassettes is Shimano 10 speed shifters and a 9 speed rear derailleur.
I have successfully run an XTR triple with Ultegra 6703 10 speed brifters and a XTR 972 SGS rear derailleur. That cassette was a 11-40 using a Wolf Tooth 40T.

Tim

8 years ago

Back in the day (mid-80’s up to around 1998), Interloc was known for out of the box designs. They made: kits to transform normal seatposts into (mechanical) droppers (I think this was called the Hite Rite); rim brakes with weird linkages and cams that rivaled or exceeded V-Brakes in power, and some of which could be run on the rear of suspension bikes without getting activated by bumps- one of them was the Widget, which got copied into a brake you CX guys may remember, the Paul Crosstop; tubular steel cranks; kits designed to hold the two halves of Bullseye two-piece cranks tightly together, something the original design was terrible for; bikes designed around 190-220mm cranks (think high bottom brackets, very short chainstays, and steep angles); some early suspension forks; a lightweight anti-dive fork. Some of the earlier stuff had a clunky, homemade, we designed it, you adjust it design ethic, but all of it was interesting. The last gasp of that I guess was when Interloc made a dual-piston mechanical brake around eight or so years ago.
Looks to me like now they make relatively ordinary, functional, mid-price, workaday stuff.
Check out this link for some of their weird old brakes: http://www.blackbirdsf.org/brake_obscura/mtb.html

SurlyWill

8 years ago

It’s great to see competition. I do wonder when the competition will lead to lower prices. No doubt CNCing the spider adds considerably to the cost. I do wonder if they could cast or forge that somehow to bring down the cost.

SurlyWill

8 years ago

Oh wait …they can. and so can those cogs. Why are these parts so expensive???

SurlyWill

8 years ago

Cold forging hubs … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J1TaNnUcRo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0T-Uu_rP40

http://cozybeehive.blogspot.com/2009/10/cold-forging-technology-at-shimano.html

Jeb

8 years ago

How hard is it to make a cassette? There seems to be a massive market for a consumable item for anybody that can produce a reasonably light reasonably priced cassette series.

Tomi

8 years ago

@veganpotter these cassettes are not stupid heavy as you say. You’ve got to realize the biggest cogs are bigger than a road small chainrings. I’ll let you check the weight of these chainring and reflect with their big bcd compared to the carrier needed for a freewheel mount.

There is no easy way to make a cassette be light and shift well. And don’t even ask for them to be affordable. CNC’D aluminium standard lightweight cassettes are compkete junk and they already cost big bucks. Titanium ones are slightly heavier and even more expensive.

Veganpotter

8 years ago

Durianrider…SRAM X7through XX Rear with road shifters:)

Tomi…ALL their cassetes are stupid heavy, including their normal road cassettes. I’ve sold a ton of these things. I guess they could use a lighter carrier for the big cogs and they could definitely drill bigger holes in them. These tini holes are worthless

Alb

8 years ago

Enjoy the overinflated pricing whilst it lasts – SLX 11sp will be here in 12 months time

Aesop

8 years ago

42T cogs are the result of single ring devotees realizing that they are busting their buts on hard climbs. 2 or 3 ring cranks work fine when they are set up properly but they are currently “not cool”.

SLX is solid gear but suffers from the lack of “bling”… I have an SLX, shadow +, RD on one of my bikes and the shifting performance is far superior to the older Shimano high end RD’s.

Veganpotter

8 years ago

Aesop, I agree that there’s still a great reason to have a double. However, if you only use 2 cogs on the back when you’re in your granny gear with an 11-34 and never top out the high end because you can spin(or don’t actually like pedaling on really fast descents), why not shed some weight, and get rid of a gear you don’t use? You’ll cause less wear for your parts. With a double, and a rarely used small ring, you’re probably spending a lot of time on your big cogs and will only use your big cogs with the small ring too. Also, if you live somewhere that doesn’t really have hard climbs, you may never even have to think about using a smaller chainring. Why have it at all?

And don’t worry, in 3 years, internal gearboxes will be what’s cool. Single ring setups will be the norm on mid level bikes and up and we’ll simply be using 1x setups because bikes just come like that. It wasn’t that long ago when practically ALL mountain bikes came with triples. Now, its mostly only bikes under $800 that have them.