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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Bicycles
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I spoke with a guy who has the Shimano Di2. One of the main benefits is that you don't have to index the derailleur... it automatically does it and always puts you in gear without any BS.
He also mentioned something about automatic shifting, which sounds interesting.
When integrated with a bike computer, it can do some other cool tricks. The shifters can also control a bike computer, which can be convenient.
At the end of the day, all of my manual shifters (grip shift, brake lever, and trigger...) all work perfectly fine and can't be hacked. LOL
When you make cycling too complex, it takes the fun out of it, IMO.
Less maintenance for sure. The biggest thing for me is I get to use all 24 gears without hearing the chain rub on the front mech.
I wouldn't say it's a big enough upgrade to replace a groupset on an existing bike. However when I do buy my next bike I'll aim to get DI2.
^^^ This.
Cables work fine when you're dealing with nine or ten rear gears, but going up from that to eleven or more gears, indexing becomes a problem, and an electrically-operated derailleur that can hit a gear correctly, quickly, every single time is nice.
For casual riders this probably doesn't matter, since people ride around on badly-tuned derailleurs all day long and just put up with it. Heck, even recreational racers probably don't need it. This is for guys wearing yellow or polka-dot jerseys around France, for whom milliseconds lost to shifting make a real difference.
I'm nowhere near good enough for this to make a difference for me, and I wouldn't want the complexity, which is why my commuter has no gears at all--I was tired of fiddling and wanted something that would never, ever break.
I feel a wired solution would be better, more reliable and more secure, but wireless is the new black.
And to be honest, a friction shifter would probably still be more reliable than an indexed derailleur. It's too bad this "old tech" gets pushed away for newer, more complex stuff :(
I think the issue with friction shifters was that you can miss or end up between gears, but with eleven speeds and almost no space between them, you have a good point.
Yes, friction shifting is often by feel. That's a pro and a con, depending on who you ask 😂