Any good after market options for larger 2x chainrings for SRAM AXS?
Really want to go to a 52 or 54T setup, but I don’t need another power meter or Red chainrings. Would love something larger but not 800 dollars
Really hoping by now someone in the 3rd party realm has worked on this
Both aerocoach and stone (aliexpress) do offer sram axs compatible 54/41 (mounted on a 107bcd so keeping some of the inner spider, check compatibility - I think force but not red).
It’s also not trivial to set shifting right (chainline and having the shifter high enough depending on model).
Yeah having tinkered with this, the bigger issue is definitely getting front shifting working correctly with the standard front derailleur. The high position FD feels like the only part of that “pro” bundle that actually needs to the gotten from SRAM to run bigger rings. And I tried with high position adapters as well.
The new Red E1 derailleur has provisions for mounting it high to clear bigger chainrings. Of course that does you no good if you have an older mech and want to stay with it (an aside - I ran a Force D1 for about 2 years and would have a drop to the outside every 4-5 weeks. That grew tiring, so I put on a Red E1 in June and haven’t had a drop since, even under lots of load. Worth it!).
The best aftermarket rings, maybe, come from a guy (Bart Blaas) that sells them direct and can be found on a Facebook group SRAM AXS Owners:
I have no direct experience, but people seem to be happy with them. It is curious to me that he uses pins and next to no ramps to help with the shifting.
This adapter to move might help the FD shift on bigger chainrings.
Road Front Derailleur Shim Spacer 3mm Upgrade Bushing Adaptor Kit | eBay
On my cervelo px such riser is not just helping, but needed.
Still, shifting up is not super reliable. The aerocoach rings, you can see that some effort went into shaping pins, ramps, teeth to help going up. This was fine after some tinkering with my lbs (and a chainring swap after pins fell off, which aerocoach customer service handled nicely). Then I had few chain drops outwards when in the 10t at the back (not even shifting). Those smaller teeth helping the chain climb up seem to not handle well the chain having a small outwards angle. Needed to add spacers around the BB to move the whole chainrings outwards, and restart the whole finicky setup.
You can make it work, but it’s some effort and hard to do perfectly. Or you can get a new red derailleur as someone posted above. Still need axs compatible chainrings (at least nominally).
(short rant: part of my still hates having picked sram when faced with such restrictions)