4 days to go - mid week bike upgrade.

So in my Monday update I said I was getting some new bits on the bike so here it what it looks like now.

Whilst it may just look normal a closer look at the front and rear mechs (the bits that do the gear changing) might give you a better clue.

These gears are eTap from SRAM. They are electronic and also wireless so there are no mechanical or electronic cables front the shifters to the front or rear mechs.

Each mech has it's own clip on battery (the black unit on the left of the rear mech) which on a full charge is good for in the region of 1000km of riding. The shifters have a CR2032 button cell in them that should last for around 2 years.

To change gear you simply press the paddle button behind the brake lever.

You press the paddle behind the right hand brake lever to go into a bigger (harder) gear and the paddle behind the left hand brake lever to go into a smaller (easier) gear. Whilst this accounts for changing gear at the back you may be wondering how you change gears at the front - the answer is simply that you press both paddles at once and the system changes to the other front chainring.

SRAM have been really clever in that they haven't used Bluetooth or ANT+ which are the main 'sports' wireless protocols but have developed Airea their very own propriety wireless protocol that uses 128 bit encryption. This means that when you pair the two mechs and the shifters and new encryption code is created as assigned to all the components. You can only ever have one front and one rear mech paired with the shifters at any time so you couldn't mess with your friends bike and control their gears from your bike.

The front and rear mechs contain accelerometers so that the system goes to sleep when not in use. Once the bike has been moved the system wakes up and is ready to go so this extends the battery life.

I've not had much chance to try it out in full anger yet as currently I'm full of cold but an initial ride round the block was without incident and the method of shifting very intuitive.

Finally a big thanks to Vanilla Bikes in Carnforth for sorting eTap out for me.