Electronic & Hydraulic Shifting (Di2, Ui2, customisations)

^^ Well, unless you're actually racing, then the penguin mk2 sounds like an ideal all year round bike that renders the dale slightly redundant ( other than a weight weenie exercise )

Just take what you've learnt from all the fiddling about as useful knowledge for future projects.

Also, to be honest, it's probably about time I admitted that it's obsolete now and stopped compulsively upgrading it.

Well it seems logical to use this as a natural stopping point- otherwise I'd need to change the Zipps to the 11 speed freehub etc etc.

^^ Are you not keen on upgrading and changing bikes then Ed?

;-)

All the time.

If you have a stainless steel winter bike, then what on earth do you use for summer?

Full crabon?

• Just realised this isn't the penguin bike thread :-s
  

Save all this bullshit for Current Projects. We don't care.

http://m.cyclingnews.com/news/shimano-di2-hydraulic-road-disc-brakes-spotted?ns_campaign=news&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=cyclingnews&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

Instead we should focus on reposts?

Repost from where? It's information about the photo that was posted earlier.

Well it seems logical to use this as a natural stopping point- otherwise I'd need to change the Zipps to the 11 speed freehub etc etc.

11 speed Zipp freehub on eBay for £25 here. It was up for sale at £50 and didn't sell. No bids so far at £25 either.

Tempted to get it myself, but I already have a surplus of Zipp freehubs, and I haven't even used the wheels yet...

Watching that now, thanks. I just bought an Ultegra Di2 group though!

Watching that now, thanks. I just bought an Ultegra Di2 group though!

n+1. Plenty of nice frames out there...

http://e-tubeproject.shimano.com/

Backstory: At the end of last year I treated myself to a couple of Cervelo framesets, a P2 and an S2. I was planning to fit the S2 with a SRAM Force groupset I had spare, but that ended up going on my Croix de Fer as I decided that the S2 was an ideal opportunity to try electronic shifting. However, I wasn't so keen with the idea of having a fugly great big battery strapped onto the aero sleekness of the S2 frame, so decided to hack the Di2 system to place the battery in the seatpost.

At the same time, I rather fancied the idea of having satellite shifters on the tops of the handlebars for climbing, but didn't like the look of the similarly fugly Shimano satellite shifters, so decided to hack them to make small shifter buttons which could be hidden underneath the bar tape. The difficulty with hacking Ultegra Di2 is of course that while the original 7900 Di2 used a nice simple 4-wire interface (power, earth, signal, signal return), Ultegra Di2 uses a two-wire interface where the signals are sent over the power wire using a distributed network system similar to CANBUS. So I decided simply to concentrate on repackaging the Shimano components but to retain essentially all standard Di2 parts.

First off, the battery. The aim here, obviously, was to reduce the physical size of the battery to allow it to be inserted into the rather slender S2 seatpost. The battery has three connectors - positive, negative, and a third one which is only used for charging. I assume it's for balancing the two cells in the battery. The battery is held together with three screws and lots of black rubber-like glom.

I carefully removed the three screws (they have one-way only heads so they can be tightened by not loosened as standard) by cutting slots in them with a Dremel and then just winding them out. However, the outer casing of the battery is also held in place by a lot of glom, so I ended up using the Dremel to split it in two and then levered the two halves off the internals. This is what I was left with:

There are two cells in series, a sensor wire running from the junction between the two cells, and a small PCB at the end, one side of which is connected to the -ve and +ve terminals of the battery and the sensor cable, with the other side being connected to the three contacts in the end housing of the battery. As far as I know the small PCB is just a charging and overload circuit and doesn't contribute towards the Di2. However, given that the plan involves having 2 LiPo cells inches from my gentleman's parts, I decided that having the wee PCB in place wasn't such a bad idea.

With the white plastic casing holding the cells together out of the way, the tab holding the two cells together could be bent back on itself so that the cells are in a straight line. For the middle sensor wire, I simply bent it roughly into shape and cut it shorter. With the charging/overload circuit at the end, sideways on, all that's needed is some flying leads to connect everything together.

Soldering done, and some tape to hold it all together, it looks like this. The connector's a model aircraft servo cable - it's light, cheap and reasonably robust.

I also added some hot glue around each of the contacts and between the two cells just to provide a bit of strain relief and physical resilience.

Once that had hardened I covered the whole thing in heatshrink (I must find my hot air gun - waving lit matches underneath charged LiPo cells is not something I enjoy doing) and then some insulating tape. All up weight is 45g, which compares to 71g for the standard battery. You could save a few more grams by using lighter weight cables, just having a single layer of heatshrink, and possibly using smaller cells, but the S2 isn't intended to be a particularly light bike, so 45g is fine for me.

Next up, modifying the charger to suit and trying to charge the modified battery.

Cracking stuff. I have the e-tube interface coming in the post btw, so if you want to update your firmware in order to be able to set shift speed, and enable multi-shift let me know.

Very nice! I don't think I could use the standard seatpost battery as it's 17mm in diameter and so won't fit inside the very slim S2 seatpost. The standard Di2 battery cells are 14430 LiPos, and have a diameter of 14mm, so the modded Di2 battery is just over 14mm in diameter (14mm + heatshrink and tape) and only just fits inside the seatpost.

Do you know how the SM-BCR2 charger connects up to the rest of the Di2 installation to update the firmware? I know the standard PC adaptor, the SM-PCE1, has a standard Ultegra Di2 plug which goes into one of the spare sockets on the shifters, but the photo here seems to show a different kind of connector on the SM-BCR2.

If the SM-BCR2 charger can do everything that the SM-PCE1 does, then I might be tempted to buy one myself at that price, even though I'll never use it as a charger.

The "how to use this" part is slightly opaque, there is reference to the new shifter harness junction boxes (SM-EW90A) incorporating a charging port, which seems likely to be the route that Shimano goes with this, I am unsure if you could simply unplug one of the shifters and plug the charger into the existing harness though.

Ah, another fugly Shimano plastic box. I'll pass... ;)

Ok, so if you purchase an internally wired Ultegra Di2 groupset from Merlin you get the following:

• 4 X EW-SD50 cables, from 300mm to 1000mm (these connect all components together)
  
• SMBR-1 battery mount+battery (for internal cabling,external mounting)
  
• Front and rear mech, left and right shifters
  
• SM-JC41 internal four port junction box
  
• SMEW67AE handlebar cable set including rear mech setup and battery warning light
  
  

Now if you wish to run the new Shimano internal battery you then need (I believe) the following:

• SM-EW90-A, junction box for shifters and charging point
  
• SM-BTR2 battery pack
  
• SM-BCR2 battery charger (and e-tube interface)
  
• 2 X EWSD50 to connect to the shifters (one to each side) as the SM-EW90-A doesn't have the inbuilt cables of the SMEW67AE
  
  

I don't suppose anyone with a knowledge of Di2 cabling could run their eye over that and confirm this?

If it is the case then I need an SM-EW90-A and 2 X EW-SD50, god-fucking-damnit.

I spoke to one of the technical people at Madison, the answer is that you can run the internal battery with the EW67 handlebar harness, however you will need to remove the battery each time you wish to charge it.

This is no great drama- the battery lasts for 2,000 Km, and I do it with my road bike.

However- one of the advantages of the BCR2 charger is that you can use it to update the firmware and gain multi-shift, set shift speed and so on.

But you can't do that without the new junction box, as it cannot plug into the harness without it, apparently.

So- if you want to take advantage of all of the firmware upgrades and so on you have pretty much no choice.

I'll (shortly) be able to upgrade Di2 firmware if anyone has it and wants the latest version, btw.

Old battery (7970):

New battery:

Connector on the top of the new battery:

Cable you are meant to charge it with:

So, I'm calling shenanigans on the theory that the charger can be used with the battery- unless you really can put a square peg (charger) into a round hole (battery).

Looks like you missing installation tool HM 336x32-ÅÆØ.

This one.

http://nyvelocity.com/content/equipment/2012/cx-di2-live-build-mark-purdy

Sugru are awesome, the 21st Century version of blutack.