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

CX70 shimano cyclo cross double ring front deraillieur

Comments (4)

AaronSeptember 7th, 2012 at 12:40 pm

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.

GDubJuly 7th, 2013 at 8:38 pm

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!

Jeff LyallJuly 7th, 2013 at 8:44 pm

I have never used the monkey nuts on mine, so with my particular model they are not needed.

GDubJuly 12th, 2013 at 1:27 pm

Awesome, thanks for the feedback Jeff.

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