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#31
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Electronic Shifting
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#32
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Electronic Shifting
On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 6:10:14 PM UTC-4, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On two of my bikes I have Campagnolo Mirage 9-Speed Ergos circa 2001 and have never had a problem with them. They are completely rebuildable and can be converted to 8-speed or 10-speed with a rebuild kit. I also have a pair of Shimano Dura Ace 9-Speed Brifters that someone gave to me because the right one doesn't work any more. Flushing it with WD-40 didn't help either. There is or was a website where a guy showed in detail how he succeeded in fixing an STI failure. IIRC it was a long, finicky procedure. The thing is that back in the day of downtube shifters they too had problems with either a worn washer/spring or loosening fixing bolt and both of those problems would result in unwanted shifts to a heavier gear often when climbing a hill. I remember those days. For me they ended with a set of SunTour Power shifters, or whatever they were called - the ones with ratchets in the lever to help withstand the force of the derailleur's return spring. The mechanism is still simple enough to easily disassemble and lubricate if needed. IIRC Shimano briefly sold a competing system, levers with an internal spring to balance the force of the derailleur spring. Index levers are simple too. And Lou alluded to the trigger shifters, some with integrated brake levers, used on mountain bikes and upright bar bikes. Those too are quite simple. The complication comes when you want one lever to do braking in one direction, shifting in the other direction, and always return to the same position no matter what gear you're in. That requires lots more complexity. - Frank Krygowski |
#33
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Electronic Shifting
On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 7:21:27 PM UTC-4, Duane wrote:
wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 9:53:19 PM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 1:34:51 PM UTC-4, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 4:56:43 PM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 2:59:31 AM UTC-4, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 4:43:02 AM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 2:54:54 PM UTC-4, Tom Evans wrote: On 12/07/2019 18:09, Frank Krygowski wrote: My concern is that unlike mechanical systems, electronics are a black box. I can look at a conventional derailleur system and figure out what's wrong with it. Usually I can fix it with very simple tools, even out on the road. I normally do all my own bike stuff. However twice this decade I have had to get shift levers replaced. They seem impossible to me to fix. So I can't really see that electronic is that big a change from where we are now. Sounds like "we" are in different places now. I'm betting that you, like most "sport" cyclists, are using brifters - STI or similar. I'm not using brifters for exactly the same reason I'm skeptical of electronics. Some of my bikes have friction shifters, some have index bar-end levers or index levers elsewhere on the handlebars. I'm sure I can disassemble any of those if necessary - but it will probably never be necessary. They are very simple devices, with little to go wrong. BTW, my oldest index shifters are on a couple different three speed bikes. I've had those apart. I don't exactly remember, but I'm guessing there were maybe three moving parts. Heck, I could fabricate replacements for those! - Frank Krygowski Lets see how often did my brifters (ergo and STI) fail on me in the last 25 years...hmm....never. In take my chance for the coming years. Ah, same as my shifters, then! No, I take that back. There was a problem with a three speed trigger shifter... But I have had friends who had STI failures, who called me to come help get them going. One was on a brand new bike, bought two days before a week long bike tour. Another was a bike that had been in storage for maybe a year. A third was my daughter's bike on our longest tour, that consistently missed shifts onto the largest cog. I was once asked to help with a broken cable, too (inside the mechanism) but I wasn't able to straighten that out before having to leave for home. I know they work fine for most people, and I think they've gotten more reliable over the decades. But your preference is almost always for more technology. Mine is almost always for more simplicity and repairability. I doubt either of us will change. - Frank Krygowski It is clear that we live in a different cycling universe and I have little hope that I get you out of the eighties of last the century. That is OK. What I am trying to say to other people was that reliability can't be the reason to deny themselves the ease of use of brifters and even electronic shifting. Fortunately 99.9% of the people figured that out by themselves. I _very_ much doubt that 99.9% of bicyclists always use brifters or electronic shifting. With brifters and/or electronic shifting we are talking about road bikes. Well in that case on this side of the pond more than 99.9% uses them. I’d say it’s the same here for road bikesas far as brifters go. Electronic shifting less so at this point but it’s becoming the norm. In fact, I doubt that 99.9% of rec.bicycles.tech readers always use brifters or electronic shifting. Again I am talking about road bikes but I have to admit that the people here would make a very odd subset of the road bike users on this side of the pond. Hell most of the utility bikes users here can shift without taken their hands from the brake position what is the essence of brifters. I don’t see anything different from your description of road bikes than what I see here. To a degree, here's what seems to be going on: "All road bikes use brifters.." "?? What's a road bike?" "Duh, everyone knows it's a bike with drop bars and brifters." But in our club, several people recently bought bikes for club rides that have light frames, at least 9 or maybe 10 rear cogs, fairly narrow tires (maybe 28s) but straight bars. They are ridden exclusively on roads. Are they not road bikes? The Surly Long Haul Trucker still comes with bar end shifters, as do some other "touring" bikes. They're intended for touring on roads. But they're not road bikes? My wife and I have (in addition to other bikes) Bike Fridays. We have drop bars and bar end shifters. We ride these only on roads. Are these not road bikes? No, they're not. These days, a "road bike" is pretty much "a bike with brifters." So it's no surprise that most road bikes use brifters. ------ BTW, there have been articles talking about the demise of cars - that is, sedans, coupes, hatchbacks, compact cars, station wagons - in the U.S. This is of great local concern, because GM recently closed a major local employer, the factory that made the Chevy Cruze. GM said it was necessary because Americans have stopped buying cars. They want only SUVs and pickup trucks. But others have pointed out that if you look at the television ads, auto manufacturers have pretty much stopped pushing cars. A long-running Buick ad is entirely dedicated to saying "Hey, don't look at that Buick car! Buick now makes SUVs! Buy those!" SUVs and pickups are much more profitable than cars, so the car companies push them. And they're trendy! ... partly because the car companies push them. The situation seems a bit similar for certain bike components. - Frank Krygowski |
#35
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Electronic Shifting
On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 8:48:46 PM UTC-4, jbeattie wrote:
Among modern inventions that I would not give up for a daily driver -- SPD pedals, STI levers, threadless headsets, two-bolt seatposts, plastic saddles, anatomic bend bars and compact cranks -- and padded bar tape. Basically everything not on that Rivendell. I also like discs and would not give those up for wet weather riding. I never want to see another straddle cable in my life. I mostly agree about the plastic saddles. So that's something. - Frank Krygowski |
#36
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Electronic Shifting
On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 15:10:12 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 5:07:51 PM UTC-4, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 9:53:19 PM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 1:34:51 PM UTC-4, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 4:56:43 PM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 2:59:31 AM UTC-4, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 4:43:02 AM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 2:54:54 PM UTC-4, Tom Evans wrote: On 12/07/2019 18:09, Frank Krygowski wrote: My concern is that unlike mechanical systems, electronics are a black box. I can look at a conventional derailleur system and figure out what's wrong with it. Usually I can fix it with very simple tools, even out on the road. I normally do all my own bike stuff. However twice this decade I have had to get shift levers replaced. They seem impossible to me to fix. So I can't really see that electronic is that big a change from where we are now. Sounds like "we" are in different places now. I'm betting that you, like most "sport" cyclists, are using brifters - STI or similar. I'm not using brifters for exactly the same reason I'm skeptical of electronics. Some of my bikes have friction shifters, some have index bar-end levers or index levers elsewhere on the handlebars. I'm sure I can disassemble any of those if necessary - but it will probably never be necessary. They are very simple devices, with little to go wrong. BTW, my oldest index shifters are on a couple different three speed bikes. I've had those apart. I don't exactly remember, but I'm guessing there were maybe three moving parts. Heck, I could fabricate replacements for those! - Frank Krygowski Lets see how often did my brifters (ergo and STI) fail on me in the last 25 years...hmm....never. In take my chance for the coming years. Ah, same as my shifters, then! No, I take that back. There was a problem with a three speed trigger shifter... But I have had friends who had STI failures, who called me to come help get them going. One was on a brand new bike, bought two days before a week long bike tour. Another was a bike that had been in storage for maybe a year. A third was my daughter's bike on our longest tour, that consistently missed shifts onto the largest cog. I was once asked to help with a broken cable, too (inside the mechanism) but I wasn't able to straighten that out before having to leave for home. I know they work fine for most people, and I think they've gotten more reliable over the decades. But your preference is almost always for more technology. Mine is almost always for more simplicity and repairability. I doubt either of us will change. - Frank Krygowski It is clear that we live in a different cycling universe and I have little hope that I get you out of the eighties of last the century. That is OK. What I am trying to say to other people was that reliability can't be the reason to deny themselves the ease of use of brifters and even electronic shifting. Fortunately 99.9% of the people figured that out by themselves. I _very_ much doubt that 99.9% of bicyclists always use brifters or electronic shifting. With brifters and/or electronic shifting we are talking about road bikes. Well in that case on this side of the pond more than 99.9% uses them. In fact, I doubt that 99.9% of rec.bicycles.tech readers always use brifters or electronic shifting. Again I am talking about road bikes but I have to admit that the people here would make a very odd subset of the road bike users on this side of the pond. Hell most of the utility bikes users here can shift without taken their hands from the brake position what is the essence of brifters. There are many types of bicyclists and many types of bicyclists - AKA many different cycling universes. That is way better than OK. Don't imagine your personal riding style and equipment choices are the only legitimate ones, nor the "best" ones. Never said there aren't more than one cycling universes and I never said mine is the only or the best one. I only share my experiences with new/modern (training)equipment. Unlike you I prepared to 'gamble' once in a while with the chance to make a mistake and waste some money. My loss and I blame nobody. By doing that I have experience with all kinds of frame materials (steel, aluminum, titanium, CF). I have experience with brifters; Shimano and Campagnolo for many years. I have experience with an aero bike and wheels. Use training aids like heart rate monitor and power meters. I have experience with electronic shifting for 5 years now. Heck I ride a utility bike my whole life. When these subjects come around I now what I'm talking about and not only from heresay. If Sturmey Archer 3 speed hubs come around I shut up and leave it to the people who still uses them and I know nothing about touring and touring bikes. For the record I gave up on ATB's because of the ridiculous technical developments, GoreTex clothing is bull**** and 1x11/12 drivetrains is beyond me. Have a nice day. Lou On two of my bikes I have Campagnolo Mirage 9-Speed Ergos circa 2001 and have never had a problem with them. They are completely rebuildable and can be converted to 8-speed or 10-speed with a rebuild kit. I also have a pair of Shimano Dura Ace 9-Speed Brifters that someone gave to me because the right one doesn't work any more. Flushing it with WD-40 didn't help either. The thing is that back in the day of downtube shifters they too had problems with either a worn washer/spring or loosening fixing bolt and both of those problems would result in unwanted shifts to a heavier gear often when climbing a hill. Cheers Sure and the damned tires go flat if you don't pump them up occasionally. Or in other words a bicycle is a mechanical device and does require a bit if maintenance occasionally. -- cheers, John B. |
#37
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Electronic Shifting
On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 17:32:11 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski
wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 7:21:27 PM UTC-4, Duane wrote: wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 9:53:19 PM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 1:34:51 PM UTC-4, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 4:56:43 PM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 2:59:31 AM UTC-4, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 4:43:02 AM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 2:54:54 PM UTC-4, Tom Evans wrote: On 12/07/2019 18:09, Frank Krygowski wrote: My concern is that unlike mechanical systems, electronics are a black box. I can look at a conventional derailleur system and figure out what's wrong with it. Usually I can fix it with very simple tools, even out on the road. I normally do all my own bike stuff. However twice this decade I have had to get shift levers replaced. They seem impossible to me to fix. So I can't really see that electronic is that big a change from where we are now. Sounds like "we" are in different places now. I'm betting that you, like most "sport" cyclists, are using brifters - STI or similar. I'm not using brifters for exactly the same reason I'm skeptical of electronics. Some of my bikes have friction shifters, some have index bar-end levers or index levers elsewhere on the handlebars. I'm sure I can disassemble any of those if necessary - but it will probably never be necessary. They are very simple devices, with little to go wrong. BTW, my oldest index shifters are on a couple different three speed bikes. I've had those apart. I don't exactly remember, but I'm guessing there were maybe three moving parts. Heck, I could fabricate replacements for those! - Frank Krygowski Lets see how often did my brifters (ergo and STI) fail on me in the last 25 years...hmm....never. In take my chance for the coming years. Ah, same as my shifters, then! No, I take that back. There was a problem with a three speed trigger shifter... But I have had friends who had STI failures, who called me to come help get them going. One was on a brand new bike, bought two days before a week long bike tour. Another was a bike that had been in storage for maybe a year. A third was my daughter's bike on our longest tour, that consistently missed shifts onto the largest cog. I was once asked to help with a broken cable, too (inside the mechanism) but I wasn't able to straighten that out before having to leave for home. I know they work fine for most people, and I think they've gotten more reliable over the decades. But your preference is almost always for more technology. Mine is almost always for more simplicity and repairability. I doubt either of us will change. - Frank Krygowski It is clear that we live in a different cycling universe and I have little hope that I get you out of the eighties of last the century. That is OK. What I am trying to say to other people was that reliability can't be the reason to deny themselves the ease of use of brifters and even electronic shifting. Fortunately 99.9% of the people figured that out by themselves. I _very_ much doubt that 99.9% of bicyclists always use brifters or electronic shifting. With brifters and/or electronic shifting we are talking about road bikes. Well in that case on this side of the pond more than 99.9% uses them. I’d say it’s the same here for road bikesas far as brifters go. Electronic shifting less so at this point but it’s becoming the norm. In fact, I doubt that 99.9% of rec.bicycles.tech readers always use brifters or electronic shifting. Again I am talking about road bikes but I have to admit that the people here would make a very odd subset of the road bike users on this side of the pond. Hell most of the utility bikes users here can shift without taken their hands from the brake position what is the essence of brifters. I don’t see anything different from your description of road bikes than what I see here. To a degree, here's what seems to be going on: "All road bikes use brifters." "?? What's a road bike?" "Duh, everyone knows it's a bike with drop bars and brifters." But in our club, several people recently bought bikes for club rides that have light frames, at least 9 or maybe 10 rear cogs, fairly narrow tires (maybe 28s) but straight bars. They are ridden exclusively on roads. Are they not road bikes? There is a description of that sort of bike. Maybe a "city bike" or a "town bike". I don't remember but I've seen such a description. Trek calls them "urban and commuter bikes" The Surly Long Haul Trucker still comes with bar end shifters, as do some other "touring" bikes. They're intended for touring on roads. But they're not road bikes? My wife and I have (in addition to other bikes) Bike Fridays. We have drop bars and bar end shifters. We ride these only on roads. Are these not road bikes? No, they're not. These days, a "road bike" is pretty much "a bike with brifters." So it's no surprise that most road bikes use brifters. ------ BTW, there have been articles talking about the demise of cars - that is, sedans, coupes, hatchbacks, compact cars, station wagons - in the U.S. This is of great local concern, because GM recently closed a major local employer, the factory that made the Chevy Cruze. GM said it was necessary because Americans have stopped buying cars. They want only SUVs and pickup trucks. But others have pointed out that if you look at the television ads, auto manufacturers have pretty much stopped pushing cars. A long-running Buick ad is entirely dedicated to saying "Hey, don't look at that Buick car! Buick now makes SUVs! Buy those!" SUVs and pickups are much more profitable than cars, so the car companies push them. And they're trendy! ... partly because the car companies push them. The situation seems a bit similar for certain bike components. - Frank Krygowski -- cheers, John B. |
#38
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Electronic Shifting
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#39
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Electronic Shifting
On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 1:03:25 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 10:50:47 PM UTC+2, Tom Kunich wrote: On Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 5:41:42 AM UTC-7, wrote: On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 10:19:22 PM UTC+2, Tom Kunich wrote: This stuff is really expensive. But is it reliable? Looking in Craigslist shows a LOT of electronic groups for sale. Though they sure aren't going cheap. The major question is: what need did they fulfill? Is there any cable failures at the pro-level? Any sticking gears or jumping gears that are attributable to the cables? Well, on 11 speeds the rear derailleurs do have much better indexing. While the cable shifted groups index in the brifters, the electronic groups are indexed inside of the rear and front derailleurs. This makes it certainly more immediately available to the position. But this would certainly be something that would work just as well with cable actuation and it would make the Brifters a whole hell of a lot cheaper though they would add the problem that like the electronic shifting you have to shift one gear at a time and with the cable units you can shift multiple gears at once with DuraAce or Record though not with SRAM. With cables it would take two cables to operate in two directions or perhaps one cable pulled on both directions - sort of in a circle. The advantage would be that you wouldn't have to plug the things in and as is usual, eventually this sort of stuff ends up on touring bikes that do not have the capability of charging anything. My friend downloads European coverage off of the web and he says that he has watch many (not some) failures of these electronic groups. The one that I saw in person failed on the very first ride. He didn't tell me what he did but I haven't seen any failures since. But even watching NBC Sports which pans away from failures, I watched two very obvious electronic shifting failures today alone. And on the other stages I have wondered why they were replacing bikes rather than a wheel without even looking at a flat. I am sure that electronic shifting will get more reliable. But again - is there any advantage to it? There can't be more than 20 grams weight advantage to the electronic stuff. I think the advantage of electronic shifting is difficult to quantify.. Using it for 4 years on my crossbike and 2 years on one of my road bikes my opinion is: - it is more convenient, - it shifts quicker because of less travel of the switch/lever, - it is more convenient in case of internal cable routing. Install it once and never worry about it afterwards, - once adjusted never touch it again, - FD shifts under load, - the FD auto adjusts depending on the RD position, - possibility of synchronized shifting. Not for everyone this is reason enough to switch to electronic shifting. Choice is good like Andrew always says, but electronic shifting proved to be extremely reliable and battery life is no issue. Personally I charge my battery once per season. Lou The rear derailleur in an electronic shifting bike has the ratcheting mechanism in the derailleur. This is both a positive and a negative. It would seem to me that high quality stainless cables designed in a circular pattern would work as well if not better than an electronic design and would essentially last forever with internal routing. Possible. The shifter of the Rohloff hub has a circular cable. As you probably saw in Stage 7, as one rider crossed the line he attempted to shift the front derailleur under load and it got caught in some intermedia position and he had to mess with it a second to get it into some gear so that he could cross the line under his own power. Looked to me like he lost a couple of seconds there. Yes that looked very strange. I don't know what he was doing but as far as I know he dropped his chain and was trying to get it on the chainwheel again, but because it was so steep there and he had almost no speed it took a whil. He lost no time though because he front wheel was already past the finish line. I don't think that battery life is really a problem but it sure as hell isn't "2-3 years". And you do have to admit that it is a source for a possible failure more likely than a cable. 2-3 years seems a long time to me also. I'm not afraid of a possible failure and don't suffer from 'black box' syndrome. If I rent a bike when I am on cycling holiday and cannot bring my own bike I choose one with Di2 if that is possible. I think Di2 is about convenience. Not a game changer but nice. I charge my 7970 battery once every 2 or 3 years. And then its just because I remember to do it, not because the battery is actually dead. The 7970 battery is a big deck of cards size battery that mounts on the downtube. Unfortunately I don't ride the bike every day or even a lot of miles. And don't really shift a lot either since its flat where I live. And basically do almost all of my shifting with the rear derailleur, not the energy using shifts of the front derailleur. The auto-adjusting feature is a new one on me and that sounds clever. What I meant was auto trimming. One feature I do use is the adjustment while riding. I have two wheel I use and they require a different adjustment. I get the system in adjustment mode by pressing a button while riding. I see my current adjustment on the display of my Garmin and I know that one wheel need an adjustment of +2 and the other -1. Like I said convenience. Lou |
#40
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Electronic Shifting
On 13/07/2019 20:49, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 11:59:31 PM UTC-7, wrote: On Saturday, July 13, 2019 at 4:43:02 AM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Friday, July 12, 2019 at 2:54:54 PM UTC-4, Tom Evans wrote: On 12/07/2019 18:09, Frank Krygowski wrote: My concern is that unlike mechanical systems, electronics are a black box. I can look at a conventional derailleur system and figure out what's wrong with it. Usually I can fix it with very simple tools, even out on the road. I normally do all my own bike stuff. However twice this decade I have had to get shift levers replaced. They seem impossible to me to fix. So I can't really see that electronic is that big a change from where we are now. Sounds like "we" are in different places now. I'm betting that you, like most "sport" cyclists, are using brifters - STI or similar. I'm not using brifters for exactly the same reason I'm skeptical of electronics. Some of my bikes have friction shifters, some have index bar-end levers or index levers elsewhere on the handlebars. I'm sure I can disassemble any of those if necessary - but it will probably never be necessary. They are very simple devices, with little to go wrong. BTW, my oldest index shifters are on a couple different three speed bikes. I've had those apart. I don't exactly remember, but I'm guessing there were maybe three moving parts. Heck, I could fabricate replacements for those! - Frank Krygowski Lets see how often did my brifters (ergo and STI) fail on me in the last 25 years...hmm....never. In take my chance for the coming years. Lou Shimano really does have brifters down to an artform. When I install them on a bike they always work until dirt or dust gets into the 10 or more speed versions. I never saw a set of 8-speed brifters fail. I have had three Shimano brifters fail, two 8 speed. The first was an 8 speed Sora which failed when the spring controlling the rachet mechanism slipped out of place, this was fixable. My next 9 speed Sora failed in the same way, but by then Shimano had changed the design so I couldn't dismantle it and repair it. The second 8 speed failure was earlier this year, on the latest Claris. Internally the Claris brifter works by wrapping the gear cable around a plastic wheel. Over time the gear cable had cut into the wheel. This had the effect of reducing the radius of the wheel and hence the cable pull. My suspicion was that this was partially due to increased tension required by tighter bends on internally routed cables. |
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