[Shades]

I was listening to 2 cycling podcasts recently, one involving Geraint Thomas and the other David Miller; whilst not the main podcast topic, both had a dig against the latest bike technology.  G had problems with his electronic shifting, presumably whist training at home, and had contacted his mechanic who told him to check the batteries in the shifters.  He was a bit WTF (all the charging up etc)!  David Miller remarked that bikes previously just had cables and air; now it was fluids and electronics and was just, well, complicated.  I was recently riding with a friend who had electronic shifting, tubeless etc; putting his bike away he removed all the batteries ready for charging.  I asked what happens if the tubeless business doesn’t work; he said he’d call his wife to rescue him.  My wife gave me the ‘good luck with that one’ look.  Someone else was raging that, on a gloriously sunny morning, her husband said that a bike ride wasn’t on as his DI2 batteries weren’t charged; he needed 24 hrs notice.

I’m pretty handy with bike maintenance; of the more recent innovations, hydraulics seems reliable and, apart from new pads, maintenance free, although maintaining cable brakes is dead easy.  Tubeless; I get it, but if you keep an eye on tyre wear and invest in decent tyres, then, hopefully, punctures are pretty infrequent.  Electronic shifting; is that necessary?  Just a trip to the LBS (booked up for weeks) when it goes wrong, wishing you had a simple cable system.  I often think to when you’re on holiday with your bike; if there’s a problem then sorting it yourself (if you’ve driven and have some tools/spares) means there’s no impact so why not keep the bike simple.  On a 2 week holiday in France I noticed my rear wheel had a slight buckle caused by a spoke nipple being pulled out through the rim.  A LBS couldn’t have been more disinterested if they’d tried when I enquired about a replacement wheelset (probably because I was a Brit); fortunately the rim held out although I was considering an emergency Decathlon purchase and sell the bike when I got home.  All this considered, I sense the bike industry has other ideas.

Topic

[andystow]

I’ve not tried electronic

I’ve not tried electronic shifting, but I’m sold on tubeless, at least for 32 mm and wider tyres. My one bike set up tubeless now has over 12000 miles / 19000 km on it, and I’ve had to use plugs to seal punctures twice now. No need to remove the wheel, just bang in a plug or two, reinflate, continue riding. Occasionally I will develop a leak that requires me to pump up a tyre before each ride for a while, but it eventually sorts itself out. Overall a reduction in time spent faffing around with tyres, and more than an order of magnitude reduction in having to do it by the side of the road.

I do wish setting up tubeless was easier. Some of my slow leaks have turned out to be the tape starting to unstick inside. The tape is also a pain to get on stretched tight enough, the last six inches or so never sticks down well. Has anyone tried any of the rim strip solutions instead? Examples:

https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/equipment/cycling-components/bike-rims-accessories/bike-rim-strips-tape/bontrager-tlr-rim-strip/p/31426/

https://www.universalcycles.com/shopping/product_details.php?id=80828&attribute=222852

[hawkinspeter]

I’ve had a couple of battery

I’ve had a couple of battery failures with Di2. One of them just happened out of the blue – cycled to work fine, locked it up and then the gears were dead when I came to cycle home. The other failure was after I damaged a cable and the battery lost power quicker and quicker until it was unusable.

Changing a Di2 battery is easy enough, but expensive.

[IanMSpencer]

I think it is slightly the

I think it is slightly the wrong analysis. From experience, tubeless, Di2 and to some extent hydraulic brakes are less hassle than the traditional technologies. Di2 has the problem of remembering to charge every couple of months – I just do it when I can’t remember charging it! – but apart from that, nothing more to do. I have changed jockey wheels due to wear, but that’s the same issue, same effort as cable.

Shimano hydraulics are a problem if you need to mess with the fluid, but typically you can go several years without needing to do that. Aside from that. pad changing is far easier than rim, and of course changing a rotor is less expense than changing a rim/wheel.

If you have a good tubeless setup, punctures are a thing of the past – just remember to top up the fluid every now and again – pressure loss while standing is usually a clue it is getting short. I’ve fixed lots of punctures for other people, but ridden through hawthorn hedges with thorns sticking out of my wheels, clicking on the frame. That being said, there are clearly poor rim designs and tyre mismatches – the tech isn’t settled.

The question for me is – is the price right? Di2 is a significant cost and although I like the hassle free aspects of it, is it worth the premium? It certainly isn’t essential, though it has saved me on some late changes on hills. Tyres – tech not settled, and there is a running cost for fluid. Disks for me are so much better in performance and day to day maintenance, they are definitely worth the premium – which pays back in wheel preservation.

I wonder what the anecdote would be if the rider, instead of forgetting to charge his Di2 (which sounds odd as they really do last for many weeks between charges even with heavy use), had a worn cable and needed to change it on an internally routed frame. Then I’d be needing 24 hours notice! In other words, the 24 hours prep anecdote is nonsense. I’ve ridden Di2 for 5 years without a failure and none of the other guys have ever suffered from anything other than a flat battery (which is typically because the charging time means it is too infrequent!). The SRAM system does not seem as reliable, with broken battery catches being a silly problem and other build problems.

So, all this gubbins has made bikes more costly, but there are quantifiable benefits that outweigh the negatives.

[Author]

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