Press Release

Cascade Components Announces Chain Guide Line 5

CascadeComponents

8/31/2021 2:58pm

We are excited to announce our first official foray into non-link related products with the release of our chain guide lineup! This consists of three different chain guide variations: a full guide, an upper guide, and a lower guide. Each of these feature our patent-pending chain guide geometry that allows for top of the line chain retention while being entirely non-contact, keeping weight down, and the keeping overall packaging of the guide minimal.

Full Guide

First off we’ve got our full guide. This delivers chain retention that is solid enough for bike park laps and at 93g doesn’t weigh much either. In fact, we believe this is the lightest full guide on the market. The design of the upper and lower guide make it physically impossible to drop a chain and ensure a good amount of chain wrap regardless of how rough the trail gets. No matter how hard your chain is flying side to side or up and down, it won’t come off. You can’t even get it to come off if you sit there and pull on your chain while spinning the pedals. Plus it’s built tough enough to take some serious impacts so that when you’re bouncing off things in a rock garden you don’t have to worry about your chainring at all.

The guide is built such that the back plate is universal and the plastics are chainring specific. This minimizes the amount of unnecessary hardware and keeps things looking refined. If you wish to switch to a different chainring size, all that must be done is bolt new plastics on and you’re good to go. No fiddling with alignment is necessary. The plastics are held in the perfect spot every time.

Specs and Details:

UHMW upper guide
Delrin lower guide/bash
Weight: 92g (32T), 93g (30T)
Designed, CNC’d, and assembled in the USA
Cost:$177 USD.

A note on compatibility… This guide is designed to work with bikes that have mounting tabs designed to the ISCG-05 standard. If your bike is built to this standard it will fit, but not all bikes are. For more info on compatibility please visit our website.

Upper Guide

Our upper only version of the guide takes the full guide and trims off the bottom guide and bash as well as that third mounting point. This is intended for those that want the most minimal chain guide solution possible or don’t have a third mounting point and can only run an upper guide. Weighing only 28g or 31g depending on chainring size makes this one extremely light guide. Even though this guide doesn’t have a lower portion, it’s still truly impossible to get your chain to drop. Some upper only guides out there will drop the chain if you back pedal (like to drop a pedal entering a turn), but this one won’t. Even if you derail the chain from the bottom of the ring, that will never make it past the guide so pedaling forward is all it takes to get it completely back on.

As with the full guide, the back plate is universal and the plastic guide is chainring size specific.

Specs and Details:

UHMW upper guide
Weight: 28g (32T), 31g (30T)
Designed, CNC’d, and assembled in the USA
Cost: $90 USD.

Lower Guide

Last but not least, there’s our lower only version of the guide. This one is for the bikes out there that have an idler or have an upper guide incorporated into the frame. Forbidden owners please note that this is not compatible with your bike, but we will have one specifically for it soon. Like the upper guide, this features the same geometry as the full guide but trimmed down to only contain the lower portion.

Again, the back plate is universal and the plastic bit is specific to chainring size.

Specs and Details: