Bacciagalupe

It's unlikely that electronic shifting will become ubiquitous any time soon. More roadies will use it as it becomes cheaper, but I expect it will always be more expensive than mechanical-only options.

Plus, it doesn't really sound like it's any more difficult to work with -- or any less mechanical, really. You just have a couple of wires instead of tensioned cables. It's not like you will need to reprogram the shifter's firmware or something.

nitropowered

I'm sure all of the Di2 stuff is made with the latest surface mount technologies, 4 layer boards, proprietary chips that even if we had the skills to replace parts on the boards, we won't have the firmware or access to proprietary chips to flash/replace them. I've got skills to replace surface mount parts but its really not worth the effort to do so.

I'm sure some hacker will be able to reverse engineer the Di2 parts but why bother. Unless you want it to shift on Campy 11 speed. Which I don't think it would be too hard to do if you were able to reflash the chips.

YungBurke

As if Di2 could be opened and debugged without breaking the damn thing. Ever try opening a brifter? Dont you know that the consumer culture dictates that you must throw away and buy anew when something breaks?
Get with the times

bassplayinbiker

with sound logic and reasoning like that, someone should elect him president.

jesspal

I also saw a Super Six Hi-mod 1 in a LBS, it looked awesome.

neuronal

From my experience, but the vast majority of consumer electronic failures can be fixed quite easily since the problem is usually either a broken wire or something trivial of that nature. The only challenging part is finding where the circuit is broken.

Sure, I probably can't fix my CPU if it screws up, but I really doubt that the CPU inside a Di2 is gonna break faster than a soldered joint. And I can fix soldered joints easily.

Fixing brifters is more complicated than fixing most circuits anyways. You can't just "resolder" a connection as easily.