OneUp Shark 10-Tooth Cluster and MiniDriver - Review

When someone mentions OneUp, there's a good chance that most people think of anodized green, pie plate-sized cogs made to provide an easier gear ratio than whatever came stock on your bike. Own a chubby all-mountain machine? Legs and lungs more Kia than Koenigsegg? Then a big OneUp add-on cog might be for you. But what if you want to make a change on the other end of your 11-speed cassette, one that would result in a harder gear for higher top-end speed, or to compensate for a smaller chainring? OneUp's $45 USD Shark 10-Tooth Cluster consists of 10 and 12-tooth cogs machined from a single piece of steel, as well as a 14 or 15-tooth cog (depending on your needs) that interfaces with splines on its backside, all of which replaces the bottom three cogs of your Shimano 11-speed cassette.


Depending on the stock cassette you start with, and if you've made any changes on the other end of the gear range, the four possible configurations stack up like this:

10-12-14-17-19-21-24-27-31-35-40 (11-40 converted to 10-40)
10-12-14-17-19-21-24-28-32-37-42 (11-42 converted to 10-42)
10-12-15-18-21-24-27-31-25-40-45 (11-45 OneUp'd Shimano converted to 10-45)
10-12-15-18-21-24-28-32-37-42-50 (11-50 OneUp'd Shimano converted to 10-50)



The OneUp MiniDriver is roughly the same height as an XD freehub, and 4.5mm shorter than a normal 10-speed freehub.


Why do normal 8, 9, 10, and 11-speed cassettes only go down to an 11-tooth cog? There are a couple of reasons, but the main one is that the diameter of the freehub bodies that we've all been using for many, many years limits how small the bottom cog can be. So while the largest cog size has grown considerably over the last decade, things had stopped at eleven teeth on the opposite end. The notable exception, however, is Shimano's old Capreo group and stepped freehub body that allowed for nine and ten tooth small cogs, as well as a now obscure system from Moulton. The late, great Sheldon Brown has all sorts of information about those two examples on his website, just in case you want to see where we've been.

SRAM's XD freehub is shorter and slightly stepped for the very same reason, to make room for the 10-tooth small cog, and it's also why OneUp's anodized green MiniDriver freehub body is 4.5mm shorter than a standard 10 or 11-speed freehub.

The freehub uses DT Swiss' much-lauded Star Ratchet system, which is a good thing in my mind. Yes, not everyone has a DT Swiss hub or one that uses their internals, but the Star Ratchet design is mega simple, requires no tools to service and can be pulled apart by hand, and can be configured to work with basically any drivetrain or axle system by using different end caps. When you purchase the $40 USD MiniDriver, it comes with bearings installed and the required axle end cap, but you'll need to re-use the two ratchet wheels and springs in your hub - it's plug-and-play.


The 14 or 15-tooth third cog rides on splines on the backside of the Shark 10-Tooth Cluster rather than on the freehub body.


The Shark 10-Tooth Cluster is actually two cogs, 10 and 12-tooth cogs that are machined from a single piece of steel, and then a third that interlocks with the smaller two. The 10-tooth cog sits proud of the end of the freehub body, and it is the splines under the 12-tooth cog that lock it in place while an extra tall lockring reaches down through the small cog to tighten everything up. Next, there's a 14 or 15-tooth cog (14 if it's going on an 11-42T Shimano cassette, 15 if it's going on a modified 11-50T OneUp'd Shimano cassette) that interlocks with splines on the outside of the 10 and 12-tooth cluster. Got all that?

Again, this is very similar to how the Capreo system worked, and while it sounds complicated, it's simple and effective. The final product is a three-cog unit with 10, 12, and either 14 or 15 teeth, that replaces the bottom three cogs of your Shimano cassette, thereby adding 10% to the range on the high-end with a net weight gain of zero grams. Pretty neat.



Installation and Setup

The job isn't hard, but messing about with your cassette and freehub can be intimidating if you've never done it before. You'll need a lockring tool and wrench, as well as a chain whip, to get your cassette off and reinstall the OneUp'd block, but your DT Swiss freehub comes off without any tools.

Once you have the cassette removed, simply pull your old freehub body straight off with a firm tug, being careful not to send the two springs and ratchet wheels flying across your garage to disappear forever. Clean the hub's drive-ring and ratchet wheels before applying a thin coating of new grease, and then slide the inner spring, two ratchets, and outer spring back over the axle and into the hub body. The MiniDriver freehub slides on right over all of this and rotating it slowly counterclockwise as you do it will allow the ratchet wheels to seat correctly. Slide the new (and required) axle end cap over it all, push it home, and you're done in way less time than it takes to read this review.


No tools are required to swap out the stock DT Swiss freehub for the MiniDriver.


The Shark 10-Tooth Cluster is even easier to install than the MiniDriver freehub; ditch those last three cogs on your stock Shimano cassette and simply replace them with OneUp's version of how to do things.
I slid the 15-tooth cog (my cassette already has the 50-tooth Shark cog installed) onto the 10 and 12-tooth cluster before sliding all three down onto the freehub body, and then tightened down the extra long lockring as per normal.



Performance

So, how does it all work? The 10-tooth cog obviously provides a taller gear than the 11-tooth that it replaced, and while a single-tooth difference is a change that sounds small, it's one that you can feel in your legs. The harder gear is, well, harder. But while my trails are relatively quick for the part of southwestern B.C. that I call home, I still rarely found myself down in the 10-tooth speed demon cog unless I was trucking along a fireroad at a good clip. There were definitely times when I appreciated the smaller cog, but this happened between trails rather than on them.

This is where your chainring comes into play, as well as what you may or may not have done to the easy end of your cassette. I used the Shark 10-Tooth Cluster in conjunction with two other Shark products, the giant 50-tooth cog, and the Shark Cage, and all of it came together to provide a massive 500% gearing range. For comparison's sake, a stock Shimano XT 11-42 cassette supplies a 281.81% range; a SRAM XX1 10-42 gives you 320%, and the OneUp'd XT 11-50 cassette offers a wider 354.54% range. The highly modified 10-50 Shimano cassette on my bike, with its Shark 10-Tooth Cluster and 50-tooth Shark cog, makes all those sound pretty narrow.


Eleven cogs, maximum range.


Yes, I know that not everyone needs that kind of range, and also that some riders will raise their nose at such a spread; I did exactly that when I first saw the numbers, but then someone older and wiser than me (okay, it was RC) suggested that I lower myself down from my high horse and think about the possibilities. Since then I've played with chainring sizes, bouncing between 32 and 34 teeth, both of which provide both an easier low gear and harder tall gear than when I was running a 30-tooth chainring with the stock cassette. The Shark setup is all about options - run what suits you and your terrain, whether that's a larger cog, smaller cog, or both.

As far as reliability goes, everything looks good so far, and shift quality on the bottom-end is unchanged from the stock setup. The freehub isn't showing any signs of gouging, and the three new Shark cogs are doing their job without complaint. My single issue with the system is that it's only compatible with hubs that employ DT Swiss' internals, which, while making sense from a manufacturing and business standpoint, does severely limit how many riders can use the Shark 10-Tooth Cluster.




Pinkbike's Take:

---

Visit the feature gallery for high resolution and additional images

---

Posted In:
Reviews and Tech Reviews Drivetrain OneUp