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TECH NEWS
SRAM wireless - 1SRAM testing wireless shifting at Giro d'Italia
Riders from the French team AG2R La Mondiale are using SRAM wireless shifting in the Giro d’Italia and here it is on one of the Focus bikes that they used for the team time trial on Saturday.
We know that SRAM wireless is certainly coming and have run several stories on it in the past, including a video. It has been used by pro riders at various events over the last 18 months. We don’t have a release date for the new technology although it’s almost certain to be before the end of the current race season.
SRAM is joining the electronic shifting party late, three pro teams having first used Shimano Di2 in 2009 with Campagnolo not far behind with their EPS system.
SRAM’s USP is that its system comes without cables. Each shifter and mech houses a battery, hence the chunkiness of the front mech shown above.
It's certainly starting to look like SRAM is getting close to the finished product and that a launch is imminent.
The word is that one shifter moves the rear mech inwards, one moves it outwards, while pushing both together moves the front mech.
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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25 comments
no-one's going to hold a gun to your head and make you go electronic- after all, Campagnolo and Shimano still make mechanical versions of Super Record and Dura Ace whilst EPS and Di" are still only slowly "trickling down". Why shouldn't this be available to anyone that has the money and wants it?
itboffin: That's cycling-weekly. I think they have it wrong. Other reports have said it is CR2032 for the shifters, with a separate, larger, custom battery pack for the the derailleurs (the dark casings in the photos).
Reports state that it uses CR2032 coin-style batteries although the plastic casing around the mechs look pretty big.
The batteries on the mechs are removable, interchangeable and rechargeable and the shifter batteries non-rechargeable - so perhaps the latter is what the report was referring to.
Sweet baby Jesus.
Carrying a spare battery?
These will be sold to the sportive generation who will pay £1000 for wheels that are 200 grammes lighter than their original wheels. They won't be carrying spare batteries along with all the other crap they put on their bikes.
Depending on cost, the weight penalty of carrying a spare battery 'just in case' is surely an option, and no doubt could (should?) be regarded in the same way as carrying spare inner tubes.
After all, many a DSLR user will pack a fully charged spare battery as a matter of course.
The batteries are inter-changeable between front and rear derailleurs. It's extremely unlikely you'd run down both at exactly the same time - even if you'd been very lazy about charging. So you could always swap the batteries over so that you could get whichever derailleur you wanted in a 'get home' gear, and leave the other derailleur operational
E.g. leave the front derailleur in the big ring, and still use the rear. Or put the rear in the middle of the block, and still use the front. Whatever you prefer.
How long before someone hacks the link and places a rider in completely the wrong gear at a crucial moment via a smartphone?
Who needs to dope when you can have a youth computer hacker in your team car screwing around with your competitors gears?
In the real world? Probably never. You're more likely to find a fixie rider entering the peleton.
We've already looked into that, and we don't think there's much to worry about
http://road.cc/content/news/119275-srams-wireless-shifting—-saboteurs-dream
UCI requirement for equipment used in a race to have an announced sale date not more than 9 months ahead
That doesn't always seem to be strictly adhered to...
Bissel development team rode this in last years Tour of California so that's at least 12 months.
Not sure how they police it anyway. "No you can't use that because in 9 months time you won't have announced it"
I guess they can fine them at a later date, but who's keeping track of all that?
yeah, i'm looking forward to retro fitting on the nice frames with no internal cable routes.
If the price isn't too extortionate*, I'll be sanding the various cable stops off my frame and getting it a nice respray.
* for the SRAM, not the sanding and spraying
Does that mean there's no manual fallback in the event of battery/electronic failure? If so, I'm out.
Exactly the same as a wired electric shift (DI2/EPS), but without a wire that can get damaged.
I thought di2/eps you could still shift manually in the event of electronic failure. How can you do this with a wireless system? (I may be being thick here!)
There's no cable with di2 that could operate the gears mechanically. di2 in theory will fail to the big sprocket at the back so that you aren't stuck in a high gear, but there's no reason the SRAM system couldn't be set to do this too.
Pretty sure you can't- there's no cable (just a signal wire) to the bars, the motors are on the derailers, and the brake levers are just brake levers with switches on them.
Oh ok, guess there's no more risk than the other systems then, although it needs additional batteries.
Call me a Luddite but I'm just not a fan of the principle of requiring batteries, the power for which is generated using carbon, to change gear, when the human powered system works perfectly well!
Not to mention the cost of parts, difficulty of servicing etc..
There are some pro trends we should adopt, and others we shouldn't, IMO
or indeed a mechanical group if a cable snaps and you don't carry a spare cable (who does). Yes with mechanical you can mess with limit screws to make the one remaining gear a little easier but it's not much of a manual fallback.
I like the idea from a retro fit point of view, especially if you can use it with their X1 system. reducing the cost by eliminating the front derailleur. Fitting it on a TT bike would make it quite interesting.
In the second picture, is that an oval chainring or is it just the angle of the camera/distortion.
That chainring is nearly as big as the bloody wheel.