Does anyone prefer Mechanical Shifting

Equipment
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In the past I would have qualified that with “unless you want to go 12-speed”. Now that 12-speed Apex mechanical has been released and 12-speed GRX will be announced soon, this is no longer true. If 2 years ago I had to choice between 1x12 Force 1 mechanical and 1x12 Force eTap AXS, it’d really come down to the price differential. If it were $500, I would have gone mechanical, no question. But I would have spent $100–$200 extra for electronic shifting. Anywhere in between would have made that decision difficult. But I wanted 1x12, so I “had to” go electronic.

I’m excited about the future, SRAM seems to want to convince frame makers to adopt the UDH standard for road bikes, too, which would give us all the benefits of its new Transmission groupset. Transmission is the first groupset that does things you cannot do with a mechanical groupset — shifting under any load.

IMHO the worst value groupset is either 105 Di2 (or Ultegra Di2, depending on your point of view, point being that one of them is superfluous). 105 Di2 has gotten so expensive that Shimano should have not released it. I don’t get it.

I haven’t had that happen on Force eTap. The only weird shifts happen when I stop pedaling and/or my cadence is very low and unusual. But that’s more down to how derailleurs work and not whether the RD is mechanical or electronic.

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I’m not discounting that Transmission has some neat stuff, but Shimano has been marketing “shift under load” with HG+ for years now.

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Yes, we should be critical of marketing, but so far reviewers have confirmed SRAM’s claims.

Transmission has been designed from the ground up to be able to cope with the torque of e-bike motors. And e. g. the much stiffer UDH is a critical piece of the puzzle to increase shift speeds and allow for shifts when high amounts of torque are applied. Both is not true for Shimano drivetrains except for the new CUE family, which is beefier so that it is a good fit for e-bikes.

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105 is available significantly below list price, in UK at least. £1100 for a 105 Di2 groupset, vs £1000 for a Rival 2x groupset which is the SRAM equivalent. 105 weighs >200g less and has better front shifting quality, so wouldn’t say it’s overpriced. At least not overpriced compared to it’s competitors, you can of course still make the argument that bikes and components have all got too expensive and I wouldn’t disagree.

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I have to say that most of the hung shifts were dealing with cadence, but I have had an incident where I shifted the rear, and it popped back to the previous gear. Just weird… I was thinking that the system was freaking out and maybe crashing, or something.

As far as 105 Di2? Um, I guess it would be a trick to pull off Di2 in steel, but why, except to draw gullible people to waste their money on a dubious upgrade to an already functional mechanical rig. I had early 105, and it really rocked for me at that time. 105 is entry level, and it just worked. What tradeoffs did Shimano make to pull that off. Enough to make it useless? (Likely?)

Ultegra Di2 is a worthy just about as good as Dura Ace. I’m glad I finally have Di2, but like everything, it’s as good as it is.

Cheers…

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Maybe I’m getting hung up on the name and cachet of the past, but 105 is no longer entry-level. Apparently, priced in some places (e. g. the UK) are comparable to Rival eTap AXS, which changes things somewhat. But going by MSRP it’s just too expensive.

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Shimano has introduced and elevated several groupsets to where 105 was. I was surprised to see so many model names I didn’t recognize, and have no idea what genre of cycling they are aimed at, but Tiagra, Sora, Claris? But even when I was doing 105, there was at least one model, if not more that were below 105.

I haven’t looked at bikes in general in way too many years. The last bike I bought, I went in on what I thought was going to be a fruitless search (again) and, early last year found a surprise Cervelo Aspero holdover with 11 speed GRX, and a rich amazing deep red color. It was love at first sight.

To jump in the market now as a noob at this point would be interesting… So many choices, and potentially still such limited availability.

But back in that day, 600EX was still lumbering across the market, I can’t remember Ultegra at the time. 105 was very common on medium priced ‘entry level’ bikes. Back then, as now, you tended to go with the model you could afford, and was available. I ended up with a Cannondale criterium frame holdover and loved it. Eventually moving to 600EX minus the crank. Pre-SIS indexed shifting was primitive but worked. Early SIS was quite a bit better, as I remember, and made life so much easier. I got to test ride a Paramount with Campy Super record, and loved it too. Campy just made biking so elegant. And expensive. (They ‘suggested’ I return with that bike as they knew where I lived😎)

Cable stretch did rain on the SIS parade quite a bit. I can remember having to turn off SIS just to make it home easier (quieter). Just rode last night and thought that Di2 declared war on cable stretch, and won. I guess if 105 Di2 works, it will find people who will pay for it. But cables have gotten so much better… :man_shrugging:t2:

EDIT: And it’s not ‘105’, it’s ‘Shimano 105’. Why? Hmm…

EDIT: And it’s disc only. Interesting. So now even more people can enjoy honking brakes. YES!! Because it’s such a fantastic sound/experience. :man_facepalming:t2::face_with_peeking_eye:

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I’m a big fan of 105 mechanical: it is functionally identical to Ultegra and DuraAce mechanical, just heavier.

Tiagra is great, but Shimano gimped it. Essentially it is based on the previous-gen 105 and is missing a cog. If it weren’t missing a cog (like Deore is 12-speed), 105 would have a difficult position in the market.

It looks like Tiagra will be replaced by the top-end of Shimano’s new CUEs family of drivetrains once they make dropbar versions. I’m looking forward to that, because on a flatbar bike you can upgrade from e. g. 9 speeds to 11 speeds by changing the shifter and the cassette. Plus, CUEs has a beefier chain to deal with the torque from electric motors. That should translate to more reliability and longevity if it is driven by muscle glycogen alone. Shimano did a great job here under pressure from cheaper competitors.

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Funny, I was looking ‘to get Di2’, and nearly everyone I talked to said to get a new bike with it, rather than upgrade to it, which was true. It’s not like the old days where you could often upgrade just a few parts at a time. Now, with Di2, you either go all in, or you walk. Heck, even just going a part at a time means you have to wait to do the upgrade until after all the parts are in-hand, and then that assumes you can get the parts you don’t have if Shimano drops that model and availability plummets.

The bike industry sure is interesting at times…

With Dura Ace, Ultegra, and now ‘Shimano 105’ being all clumped up again, something needs to happen to the clot. :man_shrugging:t2:

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This is definitely true of upgrades, since you pretty much have to replace the entire groupset. However having done some research recently it does seem though that buying a frameset and building it up yourself with your groupset, saddle, wheels, power meter, etc of choice may be cheaper than buying a fully built bike at the moment. Or at least similar price but you get exactly the build you want instead of having to swap parts out. This wasn’t true a few years ago - last time I bought a bike I costed up what it would cost me to build it myself and worked out I was effectively getting the frame for free (and it was a nice, carbon, aero frame!) since the wheels, groupset and other components would basically have cost me the same as the fully built bike.

Think maybe it’s because different parts of the supply chain have got back to normal after lockdown at different speeds. For a while groupsets were the main limiter in getting a bike since there were none available. Now groupset supply seems to have returned to normal and there are some pretty good discounts available if you look around, but maybe there is still enough pent up demand for new bikes that the bike companies haven’t had to start dtopping their prices or having sales (yet!).

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Unless people get a real deal on a groupset, I think it still is for people that just want to do it. I found an Ultegra 8170 groupset and it’s listed at $2,539.99. So to do a fresh build at the cost of the bike I bought fully equipped, that leaves $1,500 for a frame, fork, and wheelset. Hunt wheelset is $1,699.99, so that tops the 4k price, and that still doesn’t include a frame. A Cervelo Caledonia frame is $2,700.

A new Cervelo Caledonia Ultegra Di2 lists at $5,500. So yeah the wheelset on that bike is a cheaper set, but that’s still somewhat better than doing it yourself. That compares $6939.98 versus $5,500. That also doesn’t include various and sundry items like hoses, fluids, grease, bottom bracket, shop rags, and labor, etc.

However, during the pandemic I built up several wheelsets because it broke up the monotony, and I have some killer nice wheels. I do know one person that builds from scratch around here, but he is also very comfortably retired. He has built up bikes for others on occasion too. He’s gotten into legacy builds that are just mind blowing…

I’m not saying it’s not worth doing it yourself by any means, but for the ‘average’ buyer, going the building your own route is a fools errand. There are people that couldn’t figure out how a quick release hub works, and knowing they feel perfectly capable of assembling a bike that could hurt themselves or others is incredibly ill advised.

What does surprise me though is how close the cost was. And I was thinking that doing the upgrade dance makes more sense now because when I was upgrading the Cannondale I had, I got to the point where the hanger couldn’t handle the demands of jumping from one cassette to another due to the width required at the dropouts. I did it, but got to the point were the shifting was such crap, it was so noisy… Where now, going from 11 to 12 speed isn’t a huge deal. It’s all money… I’d bet that the calipers wouldn’t need to be swapped, and it’s just the electronics, and that would save some money…

It’s too bad that the Di2 system can’t just be flashed to go from 11 to 12 speed. Wouldn’t that be awesome… Making that a ‘software feature’ is a missed opportunity for them to make a lot of money off of a cheap software tweak.

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Hmm, seems relatively then that bikes are more expensive in the UK and components are more expensive in the US. Since that same Caledonia Ultegra you mention at $5500 is for sale here at £5500 which equates to nearly $7k at current exchange rates. But ultegra seems to be fairly widely available at a 20-25% discount and best price I could find for a new full groupset from a legit looking site was £1500 which is more like $1900. So paying €1500 more for the bike vs $600 less for the groupset flips the value in favour of a DIY build over here. Plus we have quite a few local good value wheel brands like Hunt and Parcours so suspect wheel costs might be lower in UK as well.

Totally agree that somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing should not build a bike!

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Is that MSRP? Lots on Shimano stuff seems to be discounted.

Jensonusa.com has Ultegra Di2 8070 shifter/caliper sets for $270 for example. You could some good savings if you’re OK with piecing everthing together. Just wanted to mention in case anyone was looking.

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It was a complete ‘groupset’ with crank, and all the trimmings. Well, minus cassette, but…

It was the first one that popped up using duckduckgo: Shimano Ultegra R8170 Hydraulic Di2 Groupset | Texas Cyclesport

Oh, apparently it does include a cassette? And possibly a chain too. Hmm… Caliper plates, cables.

I remember seeing a campy groupset at the shop I worked at. It was all in one box, and the box was amazing in itself. This one probably ships in a cardboard box and shrink wrap, but still, looking over all the goodies laid out in the box was better than christmas…

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Before I bought the Di2 bike, I was looking for groupsets and kept finding them advertised in the UK for way less than here in the states. I ended up passing on them because it seemed that many places selling them would not sell to US addresses. Probably either price, warranty, whatever. I was amazed that the prices seemed so much more reasonable, and for complete kits. Just the thought of opening the box had me really having a need for that form of retail therapy, but I found the Di2 bike and jumped on it.

I remember discussions on cameras and watches and warranty issues… Why it would matter seems silly to me. It’s their product, someone bought it, and it failed. To dump on them because where they bought it is abusive of their customers and counter productive not to mention (should be) illegal.