I’m building up a cross-check for a friend. Not sure about components. The Surly complete build (Cross-Check | Bikes | Surly Bikes) lists a 135mm Deore rear hub with Deore rear derailleur and MTB cassette to a road CX-compact double and Tiagra front derailleur, run with indexed bar-end shifters. I would have thought the 135mm spacing with a road front setup would make a bad chainline? Apparently not if Surly does it?
Anyway I’m thinking something similar, principally because you can buy cheap on Bike24 Mavic A319 rims to Deore hubs (I’m talking very very cheap), which would work well with the 40mm tyres and would be good for touring duties. But my friend would want flat-bar and not bar-end shifters. So I’m thinking a Tiagra-level flat-bar shifter setup. Although that wouldn’t play nice with a MTB rear, so I’m thinking road rear derailleur and cassette. Am I right in thinking the chainline issues would still be ok? I can’t see the difference between a road rear and MTB rear when using a road front?
I want to stay away from a full MTB kit, mostly because I don’t agree with the wide-Q of MTB cranks. And I’m also wanting to stay away from a 130mm road wheelset, mainly because the Bike24 ones are so cheap (keeping build price down) and also because I don’t want to be stuck with a 19mm wide rim (and I can’t find a wider rimmed road wheel for as close to as cheap).
The 135mm won’t make any difference (that I can see).
My old crosscheck runs a wheelset pretty much identical to what you’ll be using. I ran it with 9 speed bar-end shifters, and my bro-in-law now has it with flat bars and trigger shifters. As long as you don’t go 10 speed you won’t have any trouble with derailleur/shifter compatibility. CX cranks should play nice as well. 9 speed will keep cost down and means you can mix/match road with mtb stuff.
My wheels are the same, but with A719 instead of A319. Totally solid wheelset, great choice.
Chainstays are so long that it’s not a huge problem running 135mm OLD with road chainring placement. This was an issue on the first road disc bikes that went to 135mm with short CS. There’s lots of information out there on Campy/Shimano/etc dimensions and limits.
Watch out for shipping from bike24, the wheels may well need a true when they arrive. Also complete wheel shipping pushes the freight cost up. Buy rims/spokes/hubs and build your own?
If flat bars, you can get an XT/Saint/Zee rear shifter, a clutched XT/SLX/Zee dynasys mech and whatever 10sp cassette you want… Then use whatever shimano flatbar-road front shifter-mech combo you want to take care of the crankset of choice. Plus, if you’re ordering from bike24, you can get the sweet XT ‘trekking’ cable brake levers, and use the i-spec mount for the shifter. if you could workout a matching i-spec mtb front shifter and mech option that works with your cranks you’d be laughing.
Just watch your overall capacity / chainwrap, with a CX or compact double plus an 11-32 or whatever you’ll def need a medium cage mech. Probably no need to go triple, but I doubt the freeride mode Zee will work.
MTB cranks can be Q lowered, either by paying XTR money, or getting Sram spiderless non series road cranks and using the mtb spider on them. Gives you the subcompact front gearing so you don’t need to go to a pie plate on the rear if you want to climb really steep stuff / go loaded.
For touring, I reckon sub-compact cranks would be a better idea. Something like 40/26 or something for me. Also, if flat barring, I’d have a good look at SRAM X7/9/0 9sp setups. Good value second hand and I like the way it works.
more food: if you went with a medium cage X9 10sp clutched, you have an easy way to convert to drop bars with sram 10/11 sp shakes later on, if desired.
And there are lots of old triple cranks that can be run with a middle/granny ring combo plus a short square taper BB. Ask MikeD what his rawland has up front, I can’t remember how he 2x’d it.
It might be that Bike24 doesn’t ship certain Mavic branded products. These aren’t Mavic-branded wheelsets, they’re just a Mavic rim built up with Shimano hubs. That might be the difference.