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Aerozine Ceramic Two Tone Jockey Wheels

4
£37.99

VERDICT:

4
10
Crisp shifting and bling looks, but plagued with setup issues
Weight: 
13g

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The Aerozine Ceramic Two Tone Jockey Wheels are one of those little additions you can make to your bike to give it a bit of individuality and possibly a tiny performance boost. They certainly look bling and in terms of ceramic bearing accesories they are reasonably cheap, but I found them a pig to set up.

Jockey wheels with ceramic bearings can run into hundreds of pounds so it's good to see that Aerozine has managed to keep these two-tone, machined-aluminium alloy offerings under £40. There is also a steel bearing version for £22.99.

> Find your nearest dealer here

Why ceramic bearings? Well, they are claimed to offer less resistance and increased longevity, although that does divide opinion, with some experts we spoke to suggesting that with something so small like these you are unlikely to notice any performance benefits that will matter in the rear world.

Giving the Aerozines a spin between your fingertips prior to fitting, they do revolve with a beautiful lightness, smoother than the Shimano ones they were replacing – but then again they had done a couple of thousand miles.

In the pack you get the two wheels and an assortment of bearing covers for the varying widths of Shimano road (8.1mm), SRAM MTB (8.8mm) and SRAM road (7.9mm) rear mechs. You don't get any mech bolts, so don't lose the ones you've removed.

Once fitted, the gear changes on my road bike were much crisper through my 105 5800 rear mech and shifter, with a much more defined click as the chain snicked up and down the cassette.

Unfortunately, to get to this stage I had to spend ages getting everything set up – and even then things didn't go to plan.

I spent a decade commuting 35 miles a day year round, and I've replaced a lot of jockey wheels thanks to winter grime, salt and sludge destroying them on an annual basis as I wasn't really one for cleaning the drivetrain every week.

Some of them were direct replacements for Shimano or Campagnolo mechs, others were from various other companies, but it was always a matter of dropping the worn ones out and replacing with the new. Job done.

That was what I was hoping for here with the Aerozines, but no.

Straight after fitting them I shifted through the gears and the chain would randomly misalign with the bottom jockey wheel and jam between the wheel and mech cage every few pedal revolutions. It wasn't consistent, so that ruled out a stiff chain link, but I looked at this anyway, and double checked the alignment of the year-old gear hanger: no issues.

After plenty of faffing, I found that toying with how tight the jockey wheel bolts were made a lot of difference, especially the lower one. Undoing it by a quite a few threads made a massive difference, but even with thread lock applied I wasn't a fan of running everything so loose.

I even tried the setup on my other bike, admittedly running an 11-speed 105 groupset too, but the same thing happened.

The first 'spirited' ride was a 50-miler on smooth A-roads and then some laps of the Castle Combe race circuit. Apart from the chain jamming once on a bumpy section of road getting there, no issues.

The next ride, though, I suffered a couple of jams which I corrected by back pedalling, and off I went. Well, until the almighty bang that smashed the rear mech from its cage, and snapped the gear hanger and the outer casing of the cable. Cadence and speed were pretty high but there was very little load passing through, so the damage was quite spectacular.

My thoughts on this are the fact that Shimano's OE equipment jockey wheels come in different forms. The upper, the G-pulley, has a degree of sideways float to allow the pulley to centre on the sprocket after a shift, so the system will tolerate the setup not being quite perfect. It is also 7.6mm from bushing outer to outer, whereas the lower, the T-pulley, is 8.1mm.

Both of the Aerozines are identical, with a width of 8.2mm according to my Vernier caliper, and neither has any float.

This takes away any slack for misalignment whether from the groupset as a whole or even the frame, especially under load. That differing width of 0.6mm at the upper wheel may not sound much, but when you consider how precise the shifting is on current bikes that is quite a tolerance.

> How to adjust your bike's gears for maximum shifting performance

Value-wise, well I'm out of pocket, but when they were working smoothly they did offer a distinct advantage over the replaced parts; whether that is a near 30 quid improvement is something only you can decide.

Tacx's T4035 are £49.99 and while they aren't alloy they do have a distinct upper and lower; the Hawk Racings may shun the ceramic bearings, but the alloy wheels are very similar for £2 less; looking at the comments though they can suffer from the same issues.

I could have just been unlucky – maybe they don't work well with a 105 rear mech – but in the specification they should replace any 11-tooth jockey wheel. It's a shame, as the performance benefits are there.

I asked Aerozine and importer NRG for comment on the problems I encountered, but am still waiting for a response.

Verdict

Crisp shifting and bling looks, but plagued with setup issues

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road.cc test report

Make and model: Aerozine Ceramic Two Tone Jockey Wheels

Size tested: Size 11T

Tell us what the product is for, and who it's aimed at. What do the manufacturers say about it? How does that compare to your own feelings about it?

Upgrade components for Shimano/SRAM road and off-road rear mechs.

Tell us some more about the technical aspects of the product?

Aerozine lists the following:

Specification:

Material 7075 Alloy

Size 11T

Bering Ceramic bearing

AFM pack 2 pulley & 12 caps

Finish Twin color - Black / Blue / Red / Gold / Orange / Green

Rate the product for quality of construction:
 
8/10
Rate the product for performance:
 
5/10
Rate the product for durability:
 
8/10
Rate the product for weight (if applicable)
 
8/10
Rate the product for value:
 
4/10

Tell us how the product performed overall when used for its designed purpose

When running right, the shifting feels very crisp plus they do spin very freely.

Tell us what you particularly liked about the product

Bling looks.

Tell us what you particularly disliked about the product

Hardly a straightforward swap.

Did you enjoy using the product? No

Would you consider buying the product? No

Would you recommend the product to a friend? No

Use this box to explain your score

When I finally thought I'd got things set up correctly I was very pleased with the performance, but the faff and not knowing whether you're going to suffer from chain jam takes away any benefits.

Overall rating: 4/10

About the tester

Age: 38  Height: 180cm  Weight: 76kg

I usually ride: This month's test bike  My best bike is: Kinesis Aithein

I've been riding for: 10-20 years  I ride: Every day  I would class myself as: Expert

I regularly do the following types of riding: time trialling, commuting, club rides, sportives, fixed/singlespeed

As part of the tech team here at F-At Digital, senior product reviewer Stu spends the majority of his time writing in-depth reviews for road.cc, off-road.cc and ebiketips using the knowledge gained from testing over 1,500 pieces of kit (plus 100's of bikes) since starting out as a freelancer back in 2009. After first throwing his leg over a race bike back in 2000, Stu's ridden more than 170,000 miles on road, time-trial, track, and gravel bikes, and while he's put his racing days behind him, he still likes to smash the pedals rather than take things easy. With a background in design and engineering, he has an obsession with how things are developed and manufactured, has a borderline fetish for handbuilt metal frames and finds a rim braked road bike very aesthetically pleasing!

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7 comments

Avatar
ktache | 6 years ago
0 likes

Went for the Tacx ceramics for my getting to work bike, more for longevity, the steel ones didn't last that long.  Good.

Hope Stainless for the good bike, to replace the worn toothed ceramic ones , just fitted but seems good.

Avatar
Butty | 6 years ago
2 likes

Thumbs up also for the BBB ones 

Avatar
mike the bike | 6 years ago
0 likes

 

It's at times like these that I give thanks for my OCD-like insistence on complete groupsets.  Quite irrational I know, but I won't entertain the idea of mixing and matching drivetrain components.  It's probably cost me money over the years but, on the other hand, it's prevented me getting into scrapes like this.

Avatar
watlina | 6 years ago
0 likes

I bought a set of yellow anodised ones to add a bit of bling to an Ultegra 10 speed setup and had very similar problems. Just couldn't stop them making a noise, no matter how much I tweaked it. They just don't have the float designed into the Shimano ones. Swapped back to the Ultegra ones and it all worked well again.

Avatar
Biggus-Dickkus | 6 years ago
0 likes

I tried these types of jockey wheel years ago and just couldn't put up with the extra noise of the chain on the alloy jockey wheels... If you want a silent drive train then stick to the standard set up.

Avatar
drosco | 6 years ago
2 likes

I've got the BBB ones too. Mainly because I'm too tight to throw silly money at jockey wheels, but they've been excellent.

Avatar
StraelGuy | 6 years ago
1 like

Interesting. I have 11 speed 105 and recently replaced my jockey wheels with the cheap BBB ones and didn't have any issues at all. It sounds like an issue with the adaptors to me. When the bolts are tightened they should clamp against the inner race but not touch the outer race. If you say these worked with the screws loose, can you see the adaptors touching the outer race of the bearings if the bolts are tightened?

 

The BBB ones avoid this by not attempting to cover the whole bearing. I do agree the shifting improves though, it's very crisp with the BBBs.

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