Any recent converts to electronic shifting? Thoughts.

[Likes2ridefar]

Originally Posted by jtakeda

I had sram etap and went back to mechanical.

No knock on the electronic shifting, it worked great. I didn’t want to have to worry about charging/spare batteries etc.

Maintaining a mechanical shifting group is less work than time spent charging and moving batteries into different bags for me.

Performance is the same.

Opposite for me. Battery charging isn’t a concern. It’s almost effortless to unclip and stick it on its charging block. I’ve one extra battery while riding but never used it in 2.5 years.

I think AXS performs better than any cable shifting because it shifts perfectly every single time at barely a tap of the button.

Original poster, my maintenance requirements using sram axs are significantly less than any cable bike I’ve ridden. With dot hydraulic brake fluid I change fluid once a year and pads as needed. Keeping the bike clean is the rest of it.

[Andy340]

Just got my first bike with electronic shifting (GRX Di2) and very happy with it.
Bike came built up but I swapped out crank for smaller rings so had to adjust front derailleur and was similar to mechanical (height above chainring/lining up cage etc.) and works fine. Coming from campagnolo, was used to thumb lever but got used to hoods and shifting quickly. GRX hoods feel good (even better than mechanical campagnolo which is a surprise as I hadn’t liked shimano hoods previously).

[54ny77]

huge fan of sram red etap. have it on 1 bike, would otherwise convert 'em all to that, but...that would be expensive and not practical, and thanks to sram they made it obsolete.

if i was ordering custom, i'd get it built to accommodate either mechanical or electronic. never know what way the winds will blow eventually....

[blakcloud]

Electronic shifting was a game changer for me when I installed it on my bike. I started with 11 speed Ultegra and now upgraded to 12 speed Dura Ace. I also installed 12 speed 105 for my wife but she hasn't tried it yet. Both are setup with semi- synchronous shifting, so no more double shifting.

It is not for everyone, there are pros and cons to any gear changing system but for my needs electronic shifting was the way to go.

I have tried the SRAM stuff and I really liked it but it was unaesthetic at best. No wiring, how can you beat that? Campy never tried but I haven't heard any complaints.

[pdonk]

I switched to force axs on one bike last year. Due to being sick I've only got 300 km on it. I like it.

I need to figure out one little adjustment on it, but do far I really like it. I'd wanted to do it gor years but never had the money.

[Hilltopperny]

I have both. My two road bikes are Super Record 12spd mechanical and my allroad/gravel bikes are set up with AXS mullet or XPLR 1x systems. I love both!

The AXS stuff is a breeze to set up and shifts under load better than anything else I have ridden. No wires or nonsense in the set up aside from running hydraulic hoses for disc brakes. For 1x I would go with wireless AXS 9/10 times!

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

[Geemalar]

Electronic Etap convert here…….installed it myself, no maintenance besides charging the batteries every 2-3 weeks depending on how many miles accumulated.

Given the choice I would never go back to mechanical…….it just works that good.

Ask me again if/when something breaks on it…….until then enjoying the heck out of it.

[buddybikes]

How often do people change the shifter coin battery in your AXS?

[Alistair]

Originally Posted by buddybikes

How often do people change the shifter coin battery in your AXS?

Two years in and mine are still showing good battery (via the Sram app). I should probably change them before Croatan just to be safe.

[StressStrain]

Originally Posted by buddybikes

How often do people change the shifter coin battery in your AXS?

This is a very good question and I'm curious to hear answers.

For me: not yet! I've got 2 years and 6000 miles on my Force AXS 1x setup and haven't had to change the shifter batteries yet.

FWIW I get about 800 miles on the rear derailleur battery. I carry a spare with me so it's easy to just ride until the RD battery dies, then replace it on the side of the road.

Overall: I like the cable-free look, setup was easy, and shifting performance is great! Only negative is the RD died one day and would not wake up again. SRAM replaced it for free under warranty. I would be upset if I had to buy a new RD.

[sparky33]

Originally Posted by Tommasini53

I'm curious to hear thoughts from adopters of electronic shifting. Would you go back to mechanical shifting? Do you believe it is more or less work to maintain than mechanical shifting? I'd also like to know if YOU did the install and the maintenance. I don't want to depend on a shop. I'm very experienced with repair and maintenance.

Yes and yes.
Di2 and AXS both work great.
Di2 is for sure more complicated to set up because there are many possible combinations of cables and junctions that you can choose from, and you have to run all of that through the frame. AXS has none of that complication.
After the initial set up, they are stable and almost never need adjustment, but micro adjustments are easy to do. I am firmly in the AXS camp now. Ditto on above battery life summary

I do still use mechanical groups because I have them, and I like how they work. Different set of pros and cons, but mechanical shifting continues to shift gears as well as it used to.

[Bob Ross]

Not really recent -- this happened almost 6 years ago -- but fwiw in 2018 I converted my S&S coupled travel bike (a totally badass Carl Strong TIG-welded steel road bike) from Ultegra 6700 mechanical to SRAM Red eTap electronic shifting.

The original upgrade/installation was done by a shop (shout out to Signature Cycles! this was when Justin Bagnatti worked there, and he did most of the work) but a year or two later I had to replace the RD due to getting rear-ended by another cyclist and I did that installation myself. Just found some videos on youtube about how to tweak the RD when installing, and it was surprisingly straightforward. Not that I expect to perform the same sort of upgrade to any of my other bikes, but I think I wouldn't hesitate to try a full eTap (or AXS, whatever it's called nowadays) installation myself.

I will say, if/when I ever do get another bike it will definitely have electronic shifting, and definitely eTap/AXS. Not only is the shifting paradigm intuitive and (dare I say?) ideal, but A) it works when you're wearing heavy gloves, and B) it is incredibly forgiving of my increasingly arthritic hands. So I'm a convert.

[edit: There is zero maintenance, other than remembering to recharge the derailleur batteries every month or so, and replacing the coin batteries in the shift levers every ~5,000 miles.]

[palincss]

Originally Posted by Tommasini53

I'm curious to hear thoughts from adopters of electronic shifting. Would you go back to mechanical shifting? Do you believe it is more or less work to maintain than mechanical shifting? I'd also like to know if YOU did the install and the maintenance. I don't want to depend on a shop. I'm very experienced with repair and maintenance.

After 50 years of bar-end shifters in 2022 I bought an e-bike equipped with a 1x11 Shimano DI2 drivetrain.

I've got over 12,000 miles on the bike now. There has been exactly zero time spent on maintaining the shifting other than charging the battery. No adjustment of any kind has been required.

Originally Posted by Tommasini53

I have to wonder if upper-end groups are soon to be exclusively electronic. I have a custom frame due in the next year and am contemplating whether I should make the leap to electronic if that's where we are all headed. FYI, I am a bit of a Luddite, but if that is the direction of the industry, well, I'll follow the herd.

Don't go there because anyone else is going there. Go there for the ease and rapidity of shifting -- a mere touch on a shifting paddle -- and the complete lack of any need to fuss over it.

However your future electronic/disc brake bike is going to require maintenance. Disc brake pads need changing; in my case, more than twice as often as rim brake pads. What's more, hydraulic brakes require bleeding and fluid replacement. Other than pad changes, which are easy, the maintenance for hydraulic brakes, along with e-shifting maintenance (if any is required) are tasks in my opinion are best left to a shop and are certainly beyond my scope as a home "mechanic".

[palincss]

Originally Posted by tv_vt

I have one bike with Shimano 11 speed Di2 and it's great. But I don't ride it in the rain or in the winter or cooler weather when I'm wearing gloves, as the shifting buttons/levers are smaller than mechanical.

I solved that problem by buying new gloves, Pearl Izumi AmFib. I can tell the difference by touch between the (tiny, textured, convex) downshift paddle and the (large, smooth, concave) upshift paddle with the new gloves, whereas with the old gloves I could not.

[nmrt]

If my bike has cables to run mechanical, I am, without a shadow of a doubt, running mechanical. If my bike can run Di2 and AXS, I am, without a shadow of a doubt, running Di2. But if my bike can only run AXS, I will begrudgingly run AXS after exhausting options of adding mechanical stops (for mech ****ing) or drilling Di2 holes.

In short, I love mechanical for it's simplicity. But when electronic is concerned, Di2 is so much better to live with and experience than AXS. Compared to AXS, Shimano Di2 shifts better, looks betters, better ergonomics, and I feel is more reliable. Also, in an apples to apples comparison, 12-speed Di2 DA is lighter than Sram Red AXS.

And I say this after owning Di2 and AXS for more than a year.