Posted on May 31, 2022 by Tyler Benedict

Shimano’s GRX gravel group just got a lot shinier…and lighter. A new polished shifter lever, crankset, brakes, and derailleur are available now, offering modern dirt road performance with a classic look.

To celebrate, Shimano’s showing them off on 10 full custom bikes from 10 different builders at the 2022 Unbound gravel race expo. Fortunately, we’ve got pics of them below, too, along with all the tech details…

All photos courtesy of Shimano. Bike and detail photos by Kevin Fickling.

After the formal debut at Unbound, you’ll be able to buy it only as a complete groupset from frame builders and aftermarket retailers. Shown above is the 2x GRX Limited group on a titanium Firefly Bicycles gravel bike. Notice those new carbon GRX wheels, too, they just launched to provide a much lighter weight option for gravel racers.

The group will come in three versions:

…the key difference being the brake and shifter levers offered for the flat bar version. If you want one, contact your local shop ASAP before they’re gone.

The 1x group’s crankset gets just the polished crankarm…

…but the 2x gets a polished large chainring, too.

The rear derailleur gets a polished main body, B-knuckle, and pulley cage.

Brakes get polished calipers, and the brake levers are polished silver, too.

In addition to the Firefly (titanium) and English Cycles (steel) gravel bikes shown above, several other builders created custom bikes to show off the GRX Limited group. Above is an Angel Cycle Works titanium gravel bike out of Spain.

Chumba’s custom steel gravel bike comes out of Austin, Texas.

Enigma’s custom titanium gravel bike crosses over from Hailsham, UK.

LOW Bicycles is the sole aluminum frame builder in the bunch, hailing from San Francisco, CA.

Mariposa builds in steel out of Toronto, Ontario in Canada.

Mosaic went with the flat bar setup on their titanium gravel bike, made in Boulder, CO.

Speedvagen closes it out with a wild paint scheme on their steel gravel bike made in Portland, OR.

Tyler Benedict is the Founder of Bikerumor.com. He has been writing about the latest bikes, components, and cycling technology for 14 years. Prior to that, Tyler launched and built multiple sports nutrition brands and consumer goods companies, mostly as an excuse to travel to killer riding locations throughout North America.

Based in North Carolina, Tyler loves finding new travel adventures to share with his family and is always on the lookout for the next shiny new part to make his bikes faster and lighter. And, he’s totally gone down the NFT rabbit hole.

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Looks like they were left in the ultrasonic cleaner too long. I could that myself!

How about Shimano concentrate on producing regular GRX components, and for that matter, nearly everything else. Doesn’t seem to be but a tiny number at most of bikes with GRX anything available, and the picture isn’t any better on the mountain bike side of things. Needed to replace a SLX master cylinder, and there are none to be found. Looked for compatible Deore, XT, and XTR as well… nothing!

How much faster is production without paint and anodizing everything, though? I know polishing takes time but there are a lot of steps for paint/ano. Minimal hand polishing after time in a tumbler would be even faster. Maybe they should do both, polished looks way better on some builds.

It’s a logistics problem not a production problem

Looks like Shimano might be having difficulty getting GRX parts too, that rear brake caliper isn’t a regular GRX one. Looks like an ultegra R8170 rebranded as GRX. I guess that’s officially an upgrade.

It’s the same as in the release picture in the article. Considering the original GRX calipers were identical to Ultegra, it stands to reason that Shimano updated the GRX calipers when they updated the Ultegra for the 8170 group.

It makes so much more sense to polish brake calipers as a mirror finish radiates heat much better than black, less visible rub marks on the cranks, too. Plus it looks very classy.

Technically not true that polished radiates heat better than black (black is better), but agree with the classy comment.

Might double check your info.

What’s the basis for your claim? You might want to look up “black body radiation”.

XTR IceTech rotors have black coating on exposed aluminum fins for better heat radiation. XT rotors do not.

Gum hoods and Di2 and I’m in.

I guess we get shiny GRX while we wait for 12 speed GRX.

I like the shiny aluminum finish’s. Goes really well with those non plastic frames they wee mounted on.

Definitely expected someone would have pointed this out by now but curious to see GRX branding on some parts out of their 12 speed series.. possibly 12sp Di2 GRX to be the next big announcement from Shimano?

Or maybe there’ll be mechanical GRX 12 speed!

Interesting, credit to Shimano for doing this. It shows it’s not really about the colour of the parts but the styling. TBH and I’m suprised to think this but now I’ve seen it, these parts look better in black. Nothing looks as good to me as Campagnolo and Shimano from 10-15 years back (or older). Smoother lines and all silver finish looked great.

Great, now how long do we wait for this? We still can’t get anything regular from Shimano! How about working on getting us the parts we need #Shimano

Very glad to see this. Maybe it will be more popular than they realize and then the shiny finish will be available on other groupsets.

Shimano just can’t seem to make a good looking crank IMO. Black and can hide a lot of sins. That is so much more obvious in silver.

Black ano meant to say, freakin auto correct

Shimano has made some very nice looking cranks in the past (M800 XTR, D/A 7401, M985 XTR, Alfine, etc) but a lot of their recent stuff is quite homely, probably because it’s optimized for other things than looks. That said, the GRX double is particularly fugly.

Since modern Components uses more plastic parts, the can’t go totally silver. So the mix of shiny silver and left black parts make them look like cheaper alvio or tourney RD. (no offence on, alvio or tourney, just not as classy as it was planned)

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