Choices, Choices - The Finishing Kit.

Di2 Constraints and other bits I didn't see coming.

If Di2 enjoys certain frame features whilst deleting a few others you can pretty much fit anything you want when it comes to bars, handlebar stem and seatpost. But you can also get stuff that caters for it with Di2 specific features.

As I found with frames, if you don't want loud graphics declaring your expenditure to people at twenty paces, the list shortens.

For me, it quickly came down to Pro. Pro are the in-house finishing kit brand of Shimano, although you won't find the 'S' word anywhere on it. Unsurprisingly, Pro are as about as Di2 native as you can get with all sorts of accommodating holes and more to help hide those pesky tiny wires and the associated gubbins they require.

The idea is that non-Shimano teams can use Pro finishing kit without embarrassing a title sponsor. I checked the list of 2020 World Tour teams and whilst there are plenty listed as using Pro to one degree or another, they're all Dura Ace Di2 bikes, so that ploy is working well, at least at the top level. Mind you, Shimano teams are in the vast majority and it's not unknown for finishing components to 'rebadged' to assuage a rider's preferences regardless of the official listing. I mean who's really looking at the seatposts...

What was a pleasant surprize in a world where you can spend as much as you want on anything and this stuff is out there on the biggest stage of them all, is that Pro prices won't make you faint. Don't get me wrong, when you can get a perfectly well functioning and comfortable aluminium bar for £40, £250 is quite a step up, but you can spend upward of £500, especially if you go integrated bar and stem. My obsessing over the measurements hadn't delivered quite that level of confidence and frankly, there is a limit!

Cockpit.

I settled on the Pro Vibe Aero Carbon bar and matching alloy stem. There was a matching Carbon stem, but at £250, but I couldn't look myself in the eye and say I'd notice the £180 difference. That and the fact I thought it was fuggly.

Talking of differences, I'm also not kidding myself that aero over a round bar was going to rocket me up my local Stava leaderboard - Not with my capacious butt behind it at any rate. No, it was part vanity and part practicality.

I have large hands and the large flat aero top section is quite pleasant to hold. The reach of the bar from the axis of the stem to where the drops start is quite short and the depth of the drops best described as compact. I can reach and use all of the bar. The flat section also gives more shock absorbance in the vertical plain than a round one and of course carbon bars are renowned for absorbing road-buzz. On the pot-holed and coarse surfaces of The Fen Edge this is worthy news.

The graphics are actually quite bold in design, save for the fact that the graphics are gloss black against the silky sheen of the bare carbon. You're actually hard pressed to see them even when standing close. Stealth is a word I'm over using when talking to mates, but apt and I love the look of aero bars. That's the vanity bit.

The partnership of this bar and stem offered full internal cable routing, to the point that when partnered with a certain steerer tube top cap expander to suspend the Di2 battery inside the steerer and a bar end specific junction box, absolutely every single wire would be hidden internally save for the one leading out of the bar and into the frame down tube. Marvellous.

To smooth the nightmare of threading soft bendy cables and the not so soft, not so bendy hydraulic hoses, Pro have thoughtfully installed plastic guide tubes running precisely where the wires/hoses need to go that allow you to draw a brake cable and ferrule through, which you inturn use to draw the wires/hoses. It sounds complex, but even after a single watch of the brilliantly clear YouTube instructional, it's near impossible to get wrong and I didn't. Just double check which length wire you're attaching, watch video and repeat.

Wrong.

I had wired and routed everything perfectly but during the last act of connecting the two wires required to the right hand shifter, one thing I hadn't spotted had become clear. I do not have Ultegra Di2 hydraulic shifters. I have the non-group ST-R785 because there wasn't an Ultegra Di2 hydraulic shifter in 2014. There were only mechanical brake Ultegra and all Dura Ace Di2 shifters with two ports. No connection here means nothing works*.

This left me staring at another £160 each for the later 8000 series levers, or give in and revert to the 3-port under-stem junction that I already had from the KTM. Revert I did, because whilst I'd lose a few sheckles on the gorgeous 2-port bar end junction (a mere £12 loss thanks to eBay bidding frenzies) the use of the internal bar routing still left a very clean looking cockpit.

I couldn't get the 'aero' stem top cap to fit on the battery holder/expander, a fact that might of been hinted at by the fact it came with an internally recessed hex-bolt and a clip on round cap to cover it. However, as the shifter port issue had rendered battery position irrelevant, I decided to shift that back to its normal position in the seat stem and fit the Chis King expander and the pretty Pro Aero cap. You will note the incongruous cap head bolt in the pictures. That has since been replaced by a flush fitting item in, you guessed it, titanium. I am a tart.

The Perch - Seat post

The seat post is Pro Vibe Carbon, obviously. It's carbon and its black on black. I've only ever had alloy, so if there's any gain in comfort to be had, then I just made 99% of it in switching material. I wasn't going to lose sleep over reading seat stem reviews.

To be fair and maybe because Enigmas take a 31.6mm post, I'm not sure I notice much difference here over my previous skinnier 27mm alloy seat posts. I don't know if this diameter is a titanium tube set limitation and if it's not, did Enigma made a judgement call on frame stiffness over comfort? That said, the KTM was extremely compliant at the rear end (rear facing Go-Pro shots show the wheel moving circa 5-6mm vertically over bumps) and I'm not feeling any less cosseted at the blunt end, so I'm not complaining.

On a side note; Why is there a brake bridge on a disc bike, unless there is such a thing as too much rear compliance in a frame that involves welds?

The Perch - Saddle

I will admit to shopping under the influence of the grape on this one. I had been reading up on 'male member numbness' and started surfing for saddles that fitted the articles conclusions for hefty lads like me - Shorter with a big cut out.

I've had a fair few saddles and over sub 60 mile distances I swear by my Brookes Swallows. They're exactly as uncomfortable when you get off them as the moment you get on them, in sit-bone terms. When you get off them after a hundred miles, you could beat 'the chap' against a post and not know it had happened. Knob numbness is a thing for me.

This surfing returned lots of results; but would you believe it? There was the Pro Stealth Saddle fitting the bill at 152mm wide (close enough the the ideal 155mm for my 145mm 'normal for a woman' sit-bones, but the grape, etc, etc) and so in the cart it went. At £90 it's far from the most expensive saddle I've ever tried and failed with.

It's not lost on me that the ruddy great white stripe along the padding it means it's ironically less stealthy in appearance than the non-Stealth Vibe gear, nevermind it's own name. Having done a light post-build shakedown 20, a 67 club ride and 28 mile breathing out your arse ride in four days, I'm actually quite smitten. No saddle related issues at all. That's a first.

The seat post is not so lucky. Having established my target range of bikes through the dominantly important measurements of stack and reach, I now realise there's a third measurement that needs to be added to the reach equation.

All of my seat posts have had about 20mm of lay-back, so I started there. The Evoke (having re-looked retrospectively) has at least a degree less angle on the seat tube angle than my previous bikes. Not much, but with a 33" inside leg, that's enough to force the saddle to its maximum forward position to get my knee over the pedal axis mid stoke. I'm not really benefiting from any suspension in the rails. That said, it all feels comfy enough, but anything operating right at the end of its range isn't right. A 0mm layback version of the post has been purchased and the 20mm version hit eBay at a £70 loss. Bwaahhh!

That's a thing you add to the list of stuff I didn't foresee, to whit:

The Little Bits That Mount Up.

Brakes

Hoses. Hydraulic brakes need hoses. Again, the KTM has these and I could have transferred them, but this was never going to fly for a reason related to the preference different countries have for which side the front brake lever is on.

Somewhere the middle of most brake hoses are these little connectors. You're told they're to allow disconnection of the hydraulic hoses without having to bleed the system of air.

They're not. They're there so bikes can be assembled on a mass-scale production line and the brake handing achieved swiftly for its chosen market. Along with that comes the fact that extra hose is allowed to accommodate routing that will have the frame hole on one side regardless of market.

The KTM had its brake and Di2 holes on the left side of the frame which will look good on the frame of a country that incorrectly thinks you should modulate your least important brake with the (on average) dominant right hand. What it means in the UK is a birds nest of overly long cables, catering for nobody in particular, running in the wrong directions and it's a mess.

The front disc caliper is on the left the world over. This allows a graceful and minimally short hose run from the (UK) right bar straight into (or down) the left fork. There is zero requirement for any slack, because the bar and caliper never turn relative to each other. The rear brake should therefore pass from the left bar around the right hand side of the headstock into or under the down tube with enough slack to allow for turning. I would argue that there is no need to allow enough hose to let the bar hit the top tube at full left lock. There will be very little tension applied at full lock if you're not on the bike and if it happens when you're on the bike, you've got bigger concerns during that crash.

The upshot is that the KTM hoses were simultaneously too short and too ugly because of the splitter. Hose is cheaper than complete mechanical brake cables, but bizarrely doesn't come with the barbed inserts and olives required at both ends of the hose which sneaks another tenner onto the bill.

Wires.

Di2 needs wires a fact not often discussed when it comes to the Di2 v eTap debate, but the cost is real. These range from £16 for the shortest 350mm straight wire, to £47 for a two way junction wire. £150-£200 of them if you're trying to budget that choice. Now, I knew there were any number of these cables hiding inside the KTM but at the point I was buying them, I knew not what wires would transfer from a seatpost mounted battery/under stem junction setup to what I thought I was doing. So I bought the lot, reasoning that the spares would hit eBay to close the gap.

As it transpired due to the shifters, absolutely every last cable in the KTM would have transferred across, but again thanks to the marvels of eBay bidding frenzies some of the cables went for a mere two Great British Pounds less than what I paid. My blushes were spared, slightly. £30 loss.

One extravagance was to update the battery. Precisely a year after my KTM was released, The big 'S' brought out a battery with slightly larger brains. Brains that would allow syncro and semi-syncro shifting (see footnotes) and at least the semi-syncro part of this sounded desirable. I had experienced zero loss of battery performance apart from a time when I forgot when I had last charged it (over six months prior) and once when direct sun had cooked it into "computer says no". Parking in the shade for fifteen minutes cured the latter, whilst spinning at 120rpm for the last half hour on a club ride cured any further memory lapses related to the former.

Everything Else (That I'm admitting to).

It hadn't occurred to me that with no front facing stem bolts, the Garmin mount was going to have to clamp to the bar. There is practically no space for the usual style bar mount on the Pro Aero bar and trying with one of the plastic Garmin mounts always left either a wobbly mount or the whole shebang sitting at an unacceptably weird angle. Being slightly Aspergers**, this was near terror inducing.

Fortunately, Pro have sorted this with a bar specific Garmin mount. Unfortunately they choose the most expensive manufacturer of such mounts to subcontract it to - K-Edge. I will admit the quality of machining is gorgeous, it weighs next to nothing and fits absolutely straight, but at £57 it's also costs more than some Garmin computers second hand. In for a penny...

To whit you can add the Pro Vibe Aero Stem Spacers I bought, with their tear-drop profile extending the rear of the stem down to the top steerer bearing. Each one has a tooth on the top corresponding to the notch so they do not become misaligned with the clamp gap at the rear of the stem. But now I had to use the resolutely round and non-notched Fouriers Di2 junction holder, they did not fit. £17 wasted and I imagine a very select market to appeal to should I choose to eBay them. That said, with the Chris King Nothreadset being all curvy and round, had they fitted, they would've looked a bit like one of those down hill speed skiiers leg fairings and not really in keeping with the overall 'look'.

Then you find that the rear caliper is held on by bolts that pass through the non drive-side chainstay and that they're available in 5mm increments*** and lo and behold, yours are 5mm too long. These are another tenner including postage because they didn't ship with everything else.

Your chosen bar tape comes with rubbish bar end plugs. The reviews didn't mention that. Another £15 for some nice Nitto allen key jobs.

The stem cap bolt, etc, etc. Others will and have contested this on internet forums, but once you have mapped out the kit list, put an extra line in for £200 of extra stuff. You can come in under budget if you do that and eBay is there for the fails.

Page IV - Bike Porn

* The junction boxes do not house the 'brains' of Di2 (that's in the battery) but they are the only external connection to the world. To summarise; the Di2 loom is much like ethernet. If there's a sufficient number of ways in and ways out, it doesn't matter how you wire it as long as each end of a wire has somewhere to go. Wire in parallel, series or a combination of the two and it will work. Brilliantly simple, but unlike ethernet, if just one cable is left hanging, it all stops.

The junction box has its own proprietary connection to the battery charger. Flip a little plastic flap, plug the charger in and job done. The charger is powered by USB, but also acts as a USB interface to a PC where you can run the free e-Tube project program, or app in modern lingo. With this you can update firmware (I did for the first time ever on this bike and noticed zero performance difference) and change all sorts of parameters such as shifting speed, etc.

But there is a clever little trick that you didn't know you wanted until you had it. Semi syncro shifting. You can program the rear derailleur to automatically shift 2-3 steps to compensate for shifting the front rings. As you approach a hill, shifting down on the front causes the rear to shift to the nearest equivalent to the ratio on the back all in a fraction of a second. No pauses spinning or grinding whilst you manually sync the rear shift to your current speed. You get to preset the shifts in the e-Tube program because it varies depending upon the cassette you're using and it's not smart enough to know that, yet. Okay, we can all do that with mechanical gears, but try doing it under full power at a grinding cadence when you just got caught out misjudging an incline. You'd be brave, but Di2 does not miss.

There is also full synco shifting which renders the front derailleur shifter all but redundant. Though e-Tube, you tell it what front rings and cassette you're using and each change up or down on the rear shifter will automatically shift both derailleurs to provide an entirely sequential 22 speeds. One tooth steps? Pah! It is quick enough to really work, but there isn't half a lot of noisy gear changes going on!

You can switch between standard, semi and full syncro shift on the fly by double-pressing the same tiny button on the junction box on the fly. Neat.

** I like dual-gang light switches to be both up or down in my house, I will walk to the far end of the hallway in the dark to make this happen. I can sleep easier knowing all is right.

*** Double that with the story that is the replacement calipers from Hope. Not an 'I didn't see this' moment, but further proof that upgrades always have fringe costs!