Tech News, What's New
Another season is in the books, I hope it was as successful for you as for us. This page is designed to talk about some of the new and upcoming products that can be used with our bikes and my opinion as to whether or not the products are worth the cash spent on them.
The bike above is my own and the first of our newer titanium bikes. I had originally decided to build it with Shimano's new electric shifting, especially now that its available in a more reasonably priced form than the original Di2. Just a little short background on Di2, it shifts great, its slightly heavier and it was rediculously expensive, nearly $5000 to build a bike with for just the groupset. The new Ultegra electric is less than half so I thought I would give it a try. Still expensive but doable. Now the bad news, no TT shifters or brakes in Ultegra yet. OK , I'll just use the Di2 shifters for this one, they are not compatable. So no Ultegra electric for this bike. I have spoken with Shimano, perhaps next year. The electric shifting is great, but I am not sure what they were thinking in not making it all compatable. For those of you thinking to just use the bar end shifters and leaving the brake ones off to save money forget it, its also not possible as the wiring harness is not set up that way. So, this bike uses SRAM Force which is easily the biggest bang for the buck these, days. Its funny how the times have not changed much since the Mark Allen/ Dave Scott days and all of this gear has. All of the new groups from SRAM and Shimano work flawlessly, from Shimano 105 and SRAM Apex on up. The only real difference is weight, longevity(lighter is usually shorter lived), and your cost. The electric shifting is a wonderful product, it is very expensive and does not make the bike any faster than the standard shifting.
New pedals with powermeters. Due out shortly from 2 manufacturers. Garmin Vector and Look Keo Power. Still not an inexpesive upgrade, the retail prices are to be $1500 and $2000 respectively. The Garmin will be a little more user friendly as it is ant+ and compatable with all your favorite devices, the Look only with Polar products. This will probably really restrict their sales as most of my customers already use Garmin. So if you own a Garmin 500, 310/910XT you are ready for the Vector. These are easily transferable from bike to bike and about the same cost as whats out there now. Plus anything from either of these manufacturers tends to be a good product.
I have some of the new Speedfil bar mounted bottle systems on order, cool idea, I will have a report shortly. Profile designs new Prosvet carbon basebars, in a word, great. Incredible stiff, strong and light. The new T1+ Viper aerobar is a great match and equally as good. Together they are a great value as they are every bit as good as any of the high end offerings these days, they look great and are about 1/2 the cost. We have all the new HED wheels rolling in and they are as good a value as ever. More to come...
