RIP Bob Weir

Somewhere back in the golden years of mountain biking, Bicycling Magazine ran a feature of pictures submitted by readers. I sent in one of myself, shot by my friend Dave during one of the Snow Summit races. I didn’t get selected for the magazine but they used it on the cover of a folder for their marketing materials. If memory serves, it was a folder they’d send to prospective advertisers with their rate sheet.

Bicycling was kind enough to send me one and I was surprised to find my picture adjacent to a picture of Bob Weir.

Yes, that Bob Weir.

This is how I learned that he was a big fan of mountain biking and apparently good buddies with Gary Fisher.

Groupset chaos, because Campy

Many equipment-forward recreational sports companies operate on a model of continual updating- often they issue a “new model” of a given running shoe, alpine ski, hockey skate or whatever on a yearly basis. Cycling is no different. Even if the update is merely cosmetic, the new paintjob or minor design change is used to tell consumers that the product now is different, and better, and they should buy a new one.

In addition to cosmetic updates, there are many recreational sports companies that do more substantive updates on products on the basis of a longer cycle. Bike frames that have new geometry or features compared with the last model are traditionally offered every 3-4 years. Component groups that are better, stronger, lighter and made of blingier materials come out at much more variable intervals. You know the drill.

The savvy consumer is often happy to get the chance to purchase a slightly outdated version of the equipment if it comes at a significant discount relative to where it was before the updated item was released and relative to the price of newly-issued goods.

Campagnolo launched a new drop-bar groupset family this year, it is built on a 13 speed cassette full wireless shifting system. The variants include a 2×13 road drivetrain as well as both 2×13 and 1×13 gravel sets which come with a bounce-control derailleur (“nano-clutch”).

If this was a normal company, you might think there would be a chance of a smoking good deal on stock of the discontinued Super Record Wireless 12 speed, or on the now upstaged, but current, Super Record S 12-speed Wireless.

The Campagnolo website lists their current road groupsets as Chorus and Super Record mechanical, each in disc and rim brake variants, Super Record S Wireless, and the above mentioned three variants on the Super Record 13 platform.

Super Record S was launched in September 2024 as the “cheaper” Special Edition of the Super Record 12 at $4,299. This was apparently in response to the consumer/media outrage over the $5,339 launch price for the regular Super Record Wireless (12 speed) released a year prior.

Campagnolo then released Super Record Wireless 13 in 2025, at a groupset price of $4,750 without the power meter. Amazing and a bit unusual that the product line’s update, with clear design differences not limited to the 13th cog, would come out at such a huge discount. Clearly, Campagnolo got the message that $5,339 is an untenable price point.

But this causes a problem for the existing stock, whether still in Campagnolo warehouses or in distributors’ storerooms. Especially if the latter paid wholesale prices that are still in excess of the retail value of the new groupset.

It is not easy to find places to order Campagnolo groups, but Google tends to return places such as Lordgun, LafoBikes, Condor cycles and Gambacicli US, which seems to dump the wrong prices to a Google search. Let’s go snooping:

LafoBikes has a few SR12 for $4,120, and one SR12 S for $4,795. Availability is a little sus since they list multiple crank/cassette options. It is not weird to see such a firesale on the SR12. It is, however, odd that the SR12 S is being sold for more. The new SR Wireless 2×13 Gravel variant lists for $5,519, they don’t seem to have the road one but I wager it is close to this in price. This is a stiff premium over the $4,750 MSRP discussed in the early news items on this product.

Condor lists SR12 at $4,450 ( crank length 172.5 only) and the new SR13 2×13 road at $5,550. There is no sign of the SR12 S groupset.

Lordgun has the SR12 S for $3,485 (sale, $5,034 MSRP) no sign of the original SR12 version. Availability is a little sus since they list multiple crank/cassette options, which seems unlikely. The new SR Wireless 2×13 variant lists for $3,746 (sale) ($4,163 MSRP). which sounds like fake news, given the above prices. The site does mention that these ship from the EU and are subject to tariffs as well as normal import fees and that this will all affect the final price. Maybe that has something to do with it.

As usual, one of the reasons for this all being chaotic and unusual is that Campy refuses to do normal things, perhaps because they can’t. Maybe they are at such small manufacturing margins that there is just very little SR 12 and SR 12 S stock to get rid of. If so, there may be no need for firesale prices to distributors. Perhaps the idea is that the original SR12 user base will snap this stuff up as replacements in the next few years without much regard for the full groupset prices.

But SR 12 S is supposedly still in the lineup. The S, I remind you, stands for “Special Edition” which implied it would not be around for long. Normally an equipment company, particularly a cycling company, would trickle the newly outdated product down their product tier. But Campy went with the Super Record S moniker in the first place, continues it and has now completely discontinued the fabled Record product tier. A more normal thing to do would have been to call SR12 S the Record Wireless groupset. Or even the Chorus Wireless, if they could manage to get it down into a very reduced price range.

Just about every Campy fan in the cycling press and in the online forums is practically begging Campy just to act normal. To trickle their amazing technology down to the place where the regular people can afford it. To provide compatible upgrade paths. To stay the course on product tiers instead of zipping all over the place like crazed squirrels every year or two. To create an entry point to their products where OEM manufacturers are willing to buy it.

Campagnolo sheds 40% of its workforce

Oh Campy. Is it really this hard to run a beloved brand business?

Bike Radar is reporting Campagnolo will lay off 120 of 300 workers at their headquarters in Vicenza. Il Gazzetta broke the story. Apparently,

Campagnolo has recorded losses exceeding €24 million across the 2023, 2024 and 2025 financial years. 

This announcement follows the 2023 release of a long awaited update to their electronic shifting as 12-speed Super Record at an eye popping premium price over the competition, a 2024 release of a marginally cheaper “special edition” 12-speed electronic Super Record S, retirement of the venerable Record groupset name and the release of a new 13-speed Super Record electronic drivetrain with 1x and 2x options in 2025.

These strategies were not successful in creating profitable business years.

Oh and Campy fell out of the World Tour peloton in 2024 and only slunk back on one team in 2025. Campy equipped the Cofidis team, which is facing probably relegation out of the World Tour for 2026. So they may be right back out again. On the plus side that probably saves them a few million Euros.

In this era, Campy brass has been quoted in the press to the effect they are embracing being a luxury brand.

Which is all well and good but it doesn’t pay the bills. Not in the bike componentry business. Sales volume does that. And even at the enthusiast level that requires competing with Shimano 105 and Ultegra, or SRAM Rival and Force component tiers.

Campy appeared to “get it” when they struck a popular hit with their 13-speed mechanical Ekar gravel group. It wasn’t cheap but it was in the mix with SRAM and Shimano gravel groups, especially when the “GT” version was launched in 2024. Ekar seemingly worked really well. For a hot minute one could obtain 1) a Campagnolo equipped bike from 2) a fairly large number of manufacturers 3) at a somewhat reasonable price point. Win, win, win.

This success had the potential to re-introduce the brand to US consumers and to introduce it to new, post-Covid enthusiasts.

But they failed to sustain the momentum. No cheaper gravel group emerged, and there was no electronic shift version. Until this past summer when Campy released the 1x Super Record 13-speed drivetrain…naturally it was at a price premium over Ekar.

They likewise, or relatedly, failed to aggressively price their Centaur 11-speed or to include a hydraulic brake option.

I have Centaur 11-speed and Chorus 12-speed on my cross and road bikes, respectively.

Build quality seems very similar to me. I think it would probably seem identical to most new entrants at the entry-enthusiast level. Say, someone buying their first serious road bike. Or wanting a more roadie oriented gravel build.

The shifting works pretty well for each, with maybe a slight edge for the Chorus. I wouldn’t say Chorus is clearly superior in a way that an entry enthusiast would notice. It does have hydraulic disc brakes whereas Centaur doesn’t offer that option.

These groups show Campagnolo is capable of making a competitive product, at a ballpark-reasonable price. Their disc brakes get nearly universal high ratings. Shifting is very good at the entry enthusiast tier.

My frame of greater reference to the quality level is to Chorus 10-speed and Centaur 10-sp (w/ Chorus Ergopower levers) of 2000 and 2002 vintage respectively. The shifting of 2000 Chorus 10-speed is unambiguously better than current Chorus 12-speed. As is the apparent build quality. There is a bit of imprecision in the shifting of the modern drivetrains, particularly when shifting to a bigger cog. Also noticed when moving multiple cogs. But this is compared with a higher tier gruppo, considering that the 2000 Chorus was the second tier of Campagnolo.

It is also worth noting the earlier groups were limited to 29t maximum cogs and therefore the shift gaps were smaller.

My new road bike was priced below my 2000 road bike, so I’m not complaining. In inflation-adjusted terms I paid 73% of the price of my 2000 road bike, roughly a $1,000 savings. The bikes were each from direct to consumer outfits with house brand frames built in the Far East. A similar market tier. So it is reasonable to view the cost differential as roughly the gruppo differential.

One suspects Campy will continue to exist. The brand is probably strong enough to let it get protective financing in place. Perhaps these layoffs were a necessary condition of said financing, as suggested in an Escape Collective piece. The luxury brand model (think Rolex, Ferrari, etc) may somehow be workable. A much more limited production of increasingly expensive parts may strike the right balance to make Campagnolo profitable again.

But it will be disappointing.

Some of this is selfish. I’d like to see an electronic shift drivetrain at the more affordable end. A Chorus level might be doable as an upgrade for my road bike. Maybe someday I will get a gravel bike and would want an affordable group below Ekar level.

But some of my disappointment is that I think they make good parts that more cyclists should be able to enjoy.

Cateye Padrone Digital number five goes to four

In my continuing cyclocomputer sunk cost fallacy debacle I’m on my fifth Cateye Padrone Digital head unit.

The first unit went bad after about ten months, possibly due to creek dunking. The second and fourth ones just freaked out and stopped working. (Number three was on me because I dropped it mid ride and couldn’t find it.) The fourth one appears to be configuring normally but just won’t see any of my sending units or HR strap while in operation.

This time I got a replacement head unit bundled with a fourth speed/cadence sensor. I was hoping maybe at least one of the old broken ones could be rescued to work with one bike.

It’s always been a bit mysterious how many speed sensors can be handled by one Padrone. My original research indicated you could use it on two bikes with individualized tire circumference. When I bought my second head unit, some obscure messaging on the product site changed the prior “two bikes” to “multiple bikes”, without any clear description of how many. Some stray verbiage on an Amazon listing claimed three bikes could be seamlessly used. And this turned out to be correct.

As I noted:

The last iteration of the head unit seemed to be limited to three separate speed / cadence senders but I’m hoping maybe I can get one of my dead head units to at least recognize one sender for use on the hardtail or the Frankencrosser.

I don’t recall that I ever tested beyond three. I set it up for three bikes and this worked fine for units #2-4. When they were working.

When I tried to set up the broken #4 with my now extra new sender, I replicated all of the prior nonsense. The unit configures manually or with the app. It just won’t recognize the senders.

At some point, I noticed that I had all four senders registering in the configuration menus on Unit #4.

Bingo!

Unit #5, which is working, seems to also be able to connect to four speed/cadence sensors.

So the hardtail has now been upgraded from a Strada computer. Admittedly the latter was working okay, it even had a HR capability. But the size is really small for quickly reading the data, and it required a different HR strap.

I’ll need a few more rides to determine if it switches seamlessly between all four bikes now.

There is still no clear statement on the Cateye website about how many speed sensors one can configure. Somewhere on one of those product comparison charts they have a line for “multiple bikes” and the dot has a “*4” next to it. So perhaps the current limit is 4.

Weird because one would think this is a selling point and a sunk cost fallacy trap, as with me. It should be on the primary list of features.

Weird also because…how much onboard memory could possibly be needed to identify the nearest sensor trying to talk to the head unit? Or to supply a tire circumference value for each one?

For what it is worth this newest version has a slight revision of the battery cover on the sender and head unit. Dunno if this came along with any revamp of the brain parts. Obviously one weak point of this product is the lack of durability. This is QUITE a difference from the legendary toughness of prior Cateye bike computers. Another weak point seems to be related to Bluetooth capture, but I don’t know enough about Bluetooth to really understand. Configuration does often require getting away from all BT sources such as my phone, watch and other bikes with Cateye senders. My HR strap gets dropped mid ride on occasion and sometimes that seems to coincide with waking my phone up.

Siiiiigh. Another day, another Cateye dies

I have absolutely no idea what happened this time. The latest head unit (#4*) went on the fritz with it flashing to the clear screen when I took a bike down to ride. This was similar to what #2 was doing when it stopped working.

I put in a fresh battery and tried to configure it. Went a few rounds trying to remember the button sequences, did a hard reset, managed to get the HR strap to configure manually to the head unit. Tried linking it to the phone app, which was detecting all of my senders. No luck getting the head unit to detect movement. Or the HR from the strap.

Unit #1 or #2

Tried configuring a speed/cadence sender manually, which appeared to work. Then another one. All seemed fine. But couldn’t get the unit to detect motion from any of the senders.

Ok, maybe it is time to upgrade to a modern computer? Like the Garmin 540 solar that happened to be on a significant sale.

For $250. Holy moly these are still ridiculously expensive. About the cost of all four of my collection of broken Cateye Padrone Digitals.

This latter is now up to $87 for the unit plus one speed/cadence sender. I can’t locate anywhere selling the head unit alone at the moment**. But still, the Garmin would cost me the same as three additional Cateyes. My brother says his Garmins only last about five years, so these aren’t looking to be a forever investment. And. I would have to get all new ANT+ senders as I don’t think it would work with my three existing Cateye Bluetooth ones.

I don’t like to have to keep spending to replace these but this does have the right features that I want, and I am not paying a lot of $ for features I don’t need at present.

*The third unit did not break, this one was on me. I didn’t have it secured in a mount properly and it fell off my bike, probably bounced down a storm drain because I wasn’t able to find it.

**Actually one can order just the head unit from Cateye USA for $74 (up from $65 the last time I got one, thanks to the tariffs?) apparently with free shipping. The MSRP on the combo with one sender is $120, but I got the combo unit for $87 on Amazon (also free shipping). The last iteration of the head unit seemed to be limited to three separate speed / cadence senders but I’m hoping maybe I can get one of my dead head units to at least recognize one sender for use on the hardtail or the Frankencrosser.

Perplexing barrier installed by San Diego city street engineers

This is the stupidest possible thing. Metal crash railing has been installed just before where Crown Point Drive meets Lamont.

I have never heard of a car going over the sidewalk in this area. I have lived in this neighborhood for thirty years and have traveled this route almost every day for over 20 years. Maybe there have been some accidents but they sure aren’t common.

One: The rail is not at the curb. It is a good distance into the road.

Two: Yet somehow not far enough into the street to put the bike lane behind it.

Three: They didn’t repave the surface first, which is badly needed, making it almost impossible to do a good job in the future.

Four: The bike lane now makes it so cyclists have nowhere to go if a vehicle or boat trailer gets too close. They’ll get smooshed into the railing.

Five: The end of the rail is not angled into the curb. In the direction of travel. Any car that strays is going to center punch it instead of bouncing off!

This is insanely bad design.

Droppage

The dropper post has been failing to work properly for a long time now. My first change was of course the cable, in case it got kinked. There didn’t seem to be much interference pulling it back and forth in the housing but…easy first step.

Then I switched out the activator, because that did seem to have failed. It’s hard to see where the lever triggers the piston, and impossible to fix from what I could tell. Peering into the tiny hole doesn’t give much insight but it looked like the lever wasn’t working properly.

This landed me in a zone where it would activate, on a pretty hard push of the original Squidlock lever, but de-activation was slow. It was sometimes necessary to sit on it (down position) or stand up (up position) to give it a few seconds to lock.

The new Squidlock looked like the post lever was more than just tacked on so I got one of those. Performance of the dropper post marginally improved but it wasn’t a complete solution.

And then it got trickier and trickier to activate. One day I pushed it pretty hard and something just sort of gave way slowly. I thought the grubscrew that holds the cable was slipping.

Nope, I managed to bend the lever. Luckily Orbea sells the parts. Unluckily, it was $52 to my door for a new lever with bearing installed. (The was before DHL decided to stop shipping to the States, and before we started hearing about European postal services doing the same, because of the tariff situation.) The lever swap was a one bolt affair, super easy.

So it seemed it was time to do the job I feared was going to be a nightmare, replacing the housing.

I started trying to pull the BB but could not pound it free with the cup tool. Apparently I did not use enough of the antiseize compound when I installed it. This may be a major issue down the line but for now I’m going to leave it unsorted.

While looking at the frame layout I concluded there was a chance I could just tape the new housing to the installed housing and pull it through the frame.

Easy peasy!

Since I was messing around with the Squidlock, I also pulled the grip and installed a bar clamp so that I could move the new Squidlock inboard. The I-SPEC EV mount did not give enough adjustment and it stuck the lever too far into the grip. Easy to activate but annoying when riding.

The Orbea clamp, it turns out is simply a SRAM MMX clamp. They don’t even bother to remove the logo!

“Orbea” clamp.

On a quick spin down the block, the activation is far easier and back to how it should be. This suggests perhaps there was something wrong with the housing that slightly degraded performance, even though it wasn’t super obvious when pulling a new cable into it before.

However the de-activation is still a touch slow. Hmm. Not sure what else can be done at this point. New cable and housing and a new post activation unit. It may be time to try a different post?

While I was doing this job I also adjusted the fork’s lockout. When I first set up the new Squidlock I biased it for full dial rotation in the no-pull setting. Unfortunately this meant at full pull it was not opening up all the way. I am starting to suspect the Fox fork does need the 7+7 chip to pull more like 14 mm of cable to handle the fork. Not sure if the shock dial would play ball and handle the extra pull. At any rate I now have it set the other way so that it pulls all the way to open compression. One of these days I need to install an inline cable adjuster to let me play around with the settings.

Tariffs finally hit the bike sector

My very limited tariff tracker portfolio finally showed change a week or so ago.

The Shimano 12-speed chains are up significantly in price at JensonUSA. The SLX chain is now $39 and the XT chain is now $62. Worldwide Cyclery lists them for the same prices.

Since these are items that get replaced once or twice a year, per bike, chains are a key indicator for me.

As noted before:

Jenson still has the 12 speed XT and SLX chains at $48.99 and $32.99, respectively. Same as they have been priced for over a year.

So that’s a 18.2% increase for the SLX model and a 26.6% increase for the XT.

It’s hard to tell if they apply new tariffs to existing stock they have on hand, kudos if they do not. I notice a CN-HG701 11 speed chain is now $37.39 (allegedly on sale from $50MSRP, which is what Worldwide is charging) when I paid $33.99 (only 10% more) about six months ago for one of these. The 11 speed is an older item so perhaps they just have a lot of stock on hand.

Not everything is up, maybe even not a majority. This may depend on the specifics of when a distributor brought something into their warehouse.

A Campy Centaur 11 speed cassette that I got from Modern Bike for $80 about six months ago is now $85, a mere 6% increase. Perhaps this is made in Europe, perhaps it is old stock.

A Shimano 12 speed SLX Cassette is actually down a bit, currently $99 at Jenson and I paid $105 about a year ago. But in this case, it could be due to the roll out of the XT and Deore level Di2 groups this summer with every indication they will be discontinuing the SLX level componentry.

Rounding off the sharp edges

….is apparently bad for shifting.

I have less than awesome shifting on the MTB’s 12 speed drivetrain so I finally cleaned and re-greased the derailleur spring. The chain was still within spec (~680 miles on it) but a little corroded on one side, so I put on a new SLX chain.

Marginal gains. Shifting was better, but still lagged a bit. Since I had bought a new SLX cassette (64 g heavier due to steel second cog) at the same time as the chain I decided to put that on.

Shifting appeared to be much crisper. The old XT cassette didn’t look that bad, it’s at about 1,400 miles of use. This is the third cassette, I changed the first one at about 1,800 miles. Not so worn as to have any suspicion it was contributing to bad shifting.

But apparently it was. I’ve not paid too much attention to Shimano’s hype about the Hyperglide+ revision of the old Hyperglide cog sculpting. I don’t know if maybe I am experiencing an inevitable loss of performance on a 12 speed drivetrain that builds up due to multiple factors.

But it strikes me that perhaps there are relative sharp edges designed into chain and cogs that are crucial for perfect shifting. If so, these would be worn down with use. And maybe my eyeball wear indicator is not tuned to this new degree of necessary precision in the chain and the cog ramping.

Delium Steady, 1,400 miles

After hearing about the Delium tires’ prices on a podcast, I took a chance on one of their Steady (light carcass) tires for the front. It cost me $32, the current full retail is $40. These remain considerably cheaper than a lot of competitor tires. (I just paid $64 for the Maxxis Aggressor that replaced it, on sale* from the MSRP of $85.)

At ~550 miles

I had noticed the side lugs were getting a little ragged around 8 months / 550 miles of use, and they are much worse now at 1,400 miles. It’s always hard to say for sure but I had been feeling an insecurity in the front wheel lately. As in, it wasn’t gripping well when rolled over into a turn or on minor side slope changes. And I think I had noticed this before seeing just how bad the side lugs have worn.

This tire has seen front wheel duty only, and clearly 1,400 is long past the wear limit on the side lugs. The center lugs actually look okay, but of course that isn’t where you need performance.

Delium Steady Tire

Leaving durability aside for a moment, this tire has performed just fine. Good grip in a mixture of terrain conditions, good secure and predictable cornering, good flotation and sidewall stiffness at my usual 28-30 psi. The tire mounted up easily and could be inflated with a regular floor pump. It got me through an 8 h, 50 miler with no concerns for the tire performance.

It’s a tire.

Overall I’m very satisfied with it. Good performance on the scale of any tire I’ve ever used.

I did decide to replace it with an Maxxis Aggressor. I’d put about the same miles on a prior pair fitted front and rear and rotated once or twice. The profile is squarer than the Delium and I wanted to go back to that. In no small part as a comparison with the Delium, but also to see how it works with the Maxxis Rekon I now have on the rear.

Additional reading: MBAction Delium Fast/Steady review.

*Jensen USA and other vendors tend to run weird pricing games where the supposed MSRP is almost always replaced by a sales price. Which varies across models, and might change across time.

Rotate

I finally got around to rotating the tires on the new road bike. Strava claims 1,087 miles on it and the rear is looking distinctly more worn than the front.

The original rear tire, now on the front

I definitely should have swapped them around a couple of hundred miles ago. I did notice the imbalanced wear, just too lazy to swap them.

I have no real frame of reference on wear for the Hutchinson Challenger 30mm width tires. I haven’t put all that many miles in on road tires in recent years. Hutchinson pitches the Challenger as an endurance type tire, so mileage should be on the higher side. This is also an inexpensive tire, I’m seeing it on sale at $26 from a MSRP of $34.

The original front, swapped to the rear

I anticipate I am maybe halfway through these ones, which sounds about right.

Orbea holds prices steady on XT Di2

This is surprising.

I was just speculating that the reason Jenson had the 2025 Oiz M10 on sale for $5,099, a $900 discount, was the release of Shimano’s new completely wireless XT Di2 group.

While it wasn’t clear when the new group would be available on the Oiz products, one could reasonably assume the consumer be willing to might wait (and be willing to pay a price premium) to get the new group.

So Jenson’s sale price of the cable-spec bike would seemingly be wise, as the XT price point consumer is likely dazzled by function more than driven by price.

I assumed Shimano would charge more for 1) a newly released groupset and 2) wireless shifting. I also assumed that the bike brands would have to increase their prices 1) to cover the OEM deal being offered by Shimano and 2) to profit from the new functionality.

Orbea shocked me. They have the wireless XT spec on the Oiz M10 build at the same price. No change from the past ~3 year price of the M10 with cable shifting.

Oiz M10, wireless XT spec

As far as I can tell this is a full specification of the new groupset. XT 8200 level. No apparent down-spec of the rest of the bike, either, although I haven’t done a close comparison. On a fast read, the same MP30Team wheel spec. The rest seems mostly their same house brand componentry.

This is surprising in part because the upgrade kit (shifter and derailleur) costs $860. Replacing the previous XT 8100 cable shifter and derailleur is only $220 MSRP. We might expect OEM cost to be lower than the aftermarket replacement price but $640 lower?

Obviously $6,000 for a bicycle is not cheap. But this is in the expected range for this tier of bike and I think it represents a value sweet spot for the enthusiasts level rider. Time will tell if the other brands likewise keep their prices for the new XT wireless in line with their cable shift predecessors.

Time will also tell if this is a temporary bargain and the 2026 model year Oiz M10 has a higher cost.

Hopefully it doesn’t escape notice that the $900 discount on the Oiz M10 at Jenson is larger than the wireless upgrade. If you did this, the takeoff cable shifter/derailleur would probably get you at least $100 resale. Perhaps not worth giving up the revised crankset and XT over SLX chain? One thing that is not clear on the Orbea site is whether the brakes are from the latest groupset (M8200) or if they are the old ones (M8100). That could be a significant downgrade. There is some chance that we will see further price reductions on cable spec M10 stock, at other sellers if not Jenson. Particularly in the less popular sizes.

A good time to pick up XT bikes on sale?

A few weeks ago I noticed the 2025 Orbea Oiz M10 listed at a 15% discount on Jenson. $5,099 instead of the $5,999 price this model has been listed for since January 2022.

In fact the Orbea site still lists it as $5,999, without any indication of a new 2026 model. It’s June, the heat of the new bike season. This is not commonly a time for steep sales.

Perhaps the company is still dealing with post-COVID market issues of over stocking relative to softening demand. I don’t know how Orbea meddles in dealer pricing but I tend to assume they permit dealers to run sales, or not, at various times. It just seems to be the case that end of model year type sales hit all dealers at the same time and for the same discount. So this may be company action, despite their website price being unchanged.

The current version of the Oiz was launched for the 2024 model year so presumably orders were made to their Taiwanese factory supplier in 2022 or 2023.

The recent news from Shimano provides a different theory. Big S has launched wireless electronic Di2 drivetrains at the XT and Deore product tiers. Dealers who have M10 bikes on hand may be concerned that the target XT-preferring consumer may wait until the Oiz has the electronic option. Or at the very least to wait to see what the price difference might be.

If so, this may generalize to a lot of bike brands and models with XT level component spec.

Give OEM deals, one assumes the Oiz XT Di2 spec will come in somewhere below the $5,999 plus XT Di2 upgrade $860 level.

One uncertainty here is that the XT release is actually for a new groupset, with claims to upgrades all around. Presumably any new spec Oiz M10e (or whatever) will have the whole group, possibly for a nasty upgrade in price.

So the consumer has to wait to see how much this will cost them.

Also fascinating is the consideration that the M10 sale discount covers the upgrade. So one could order up a 2025 Oiz M10, add the XT Di2 shifter/derailleur (when available) and bring it home for what the mech version cost only weeks ago.

Shimano shocker! XT and Deore level Di2 wireless released!

I’m shocked.

Rather than doing a slow trickle down over months or years, Shimano waited only a matter of weeks after announcing new wireless XTR Di2 to release lower tier wireless groups.

Bike rumor reports that new XT and Deore wireless Di2 groupsets are out. They are full groupsets but if you have a recent 12-speed MTB drivetrain from Shimano, all you need to upgrade are the shifter and derailleur.

The XT upgrade kit of shifter, derailleur and charger is $860, a paltry $125 below XTR.

The Deore level is $675. That’s more of a motivational discount.

As per usual for Shimano, differences across tiers are mostly in the materials used (and therefore the weight) and minor tweaks to shifter functionality. The Deore derailleur only comes in the SGS long cage that handles the 10-51 cassette, whereas the other two tiers have a medium cage. No big deal, there is not likely to be a big market for more limited gearing at the Deore level- and the SGS will shift the smaller cassette if needed.

It is unclear if Shimano has maintained cross-compatibility of shifters and derailleurs across all three tiers. If so, one might opt for a shifter with fancier functions and a derailleur that costs less to replace if you smash it up.

Deore is probably going to be very good stuff if we can go by the quality of the latest Deore 12 speed mechanical. A bargain?

Of course, a brand new mechanical XT derailleur and shifter would only set you back about $500. If you were looking to freshen up your drivetrain.

As noted on these pages, my introduction to wireless was the Wheeltop MTB system. It was relatively cheap and allowed configuration to any cassette from 7-13 speed so it was attractive for tinkering and retrofitting purposes. It’s given me a better appreciation for what wireless / electronic shifting brings to the table, even if this is a lower quality product.

The latest version of the WheelTop MTB shifter/derailleur package is $399. Two major design iterations and it costs the same amount. This is quite a savings over the Deore Di2 upgrade. But there are still nagging complaints about the WheelTop systems being hard to configure and sometimes touchy, losing functionality at times. I still don’t have clear understanding if the S corps’ electronic derailleurs drive both directions. The original WheelTop one has a spring to upshift to smaller cogs like a mechanical derailleur. I assume all of their products work this way. If Di2 drives both directions electronically, this is seemingly a lot better.

So if I busted a mechanical derailleur tomorrow, I would be giving Deore Di2 a consideration.

Speaking of new wireless

Hot on the heels of a new 13 speed Super Record Wireless group from Campagnolo, Shimano has announced a new Di2 XTR groupset. And, tahdah, it is also fully wireless.

Yes, the derailleur now has a mounted battery that is removable for charging. Previous Di2 systems require wiring the derailleurs to a battery stored inside the frame. This poses obvious hurdles for retrofitting on existing frames if they are not designed for this. And is more annoying and less elegant in any case.

In addition, they have not gone with a direct mount system but have opted for traditional derailleur hanger mount.

This is fantastic on both fronts. This is a system that can go on essentially any MTB frame. No need to route wires. No need for SRAM’s Trojan Horse (although it will work for UDH frames).

A podcast from the Escape Collective spoke with a Shimano product manager who explained that yeah, a change related to patents (SRAM was not directly referenced) stretched out the development cycle- it has Ben some 7 years since the last XTR Di2 came out. The message seemed to be that they were several years into a XTR revamp when they were suddenly freed up to use the battery on-board approach and started over.

Recall that a new XT Di2 was released a few years ago but it was disappointingly an e-bike only system that had to be wired into the e-bike main battery. I would not be at all surprised if this was a sort of stop gap measure when it became clear they had to go to full wireless.

Shimano stayed at 12 speed for this new drivetrain, so retrofitting just the shifter and derailleur to any recent mechanical Shimano drivetrain from Deore to XTR should be possible. And Shimano is even offering the upgrade package right off the start line. The trouble is…it’s $985. That is a lot of cash.

We will undoubtedly see Di2 full wireless at the XT level and below over the next few years. SRAM has wireless deep down their product tiers and WheelTop is making inroads at the cheaper end of the market. Shimano needs to compete. Unfortunately they are likely to sell the chi-chi XTR stuff for a year or more before giving us an affordable alternative. Going by past marketing strategies anyway.

My baseline on going wireless has moved a little bit. The wheeltop system I have has worked pretty well, despite being used for a stretch drivetrain that it isn’t designed for. The battery life is way better than anticipated in use on my commuter rig, so I’m wavering on main bike wireless. Continued complaints about configuration issues as WheelTop issued versions for road, gravel and then a revised MTB group suggests this is not going to be a solution for my main MTB. But I am starting to admit electronic shifting has its good points.

Shimano full wireless Di2 is more attractive. But not at the XTR level. I have to wait for XT. Or, given the likely cost premium of electronic shifting, for SLX.

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