One of my sponsored athletes, Harriet Anderson, has been using Dura-Ace 7970 for about seven years.

Modern groups are well sealed and well manufactured.
Double sided circuit boards rarely have solder problems and without moisture in there the electronics is in a pretty sweet place.
Every electronic drivetrain component I have seen fail has been mechanical damage or failed early being one of the small number of faulty manufacturer units.
Usual fail point are the rack and pinion gears in Shimano from impact, bad batteries, obvious mechanical crash mangulation.
Other than that they have an excellent reliability record.

I'm still on original 10 speed 7970 Di2. It's 6 years old and has never missed a shift, all I've done in the past 6 years is charge the battery. Even the battery still holds it's charge the same as it did when new, this amazes me given the 1-2 year life of an iphone battery!

I'd say I was a reasonably heavy user having trained for and competed in 8 Ironman races over the past 6 years

I'm still on the original Dura-Ace 7970. Just this past fall had the control box go bad on me and had to replace it....everything else has been perfect....still on the original battery. One downside is it's starting to get difficult to get parts for 7970 so I am planning on getting a new bike with the current version of Di2 so availability of parts (if ever needed) will not be a problem.

I have a Garmin 510 and Ultegra 6750 from 2013. The Ultegra is still perfect, including the original battery. The Garmin is a bit slow to link with the satellites and freezes when I don't delete old rides regularly.

Good to know.

One of the reasons I'm asking is because I pulled out the TT/Tri bike this year after several years of it sitting dormant. A quick checkover, dust off the cobwebs (literally), put air in the tires and it was good to go. Now I've swapped all the parts over to a new frame, just needed 2 new inner cables and a small section of housing for the rear brake.

If electronic is (or becomes) that easy or easier, then I'll make the switch. In an ideal world, it'll be a fully wireless TT group, which doesn't exist quite yet, but I'm sure it will eventually.

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Assuming 4 Shifting Points, you'll always have to connect them with cables unless you want to deal with four different batteries.
It would be nice to see the size of that central unit (i.e. Blip Box) go down quite a bit though.

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

I don't see an issue with that. Couple of button cell batteries in each shift point will last a really long time. I'd prefer to not have to deal with a blip-box / junction box at all. fine tuning and setup could be over bluetooth with an app on your phone.

not having any wires at all lends itself to much cleaner and more versatile setups.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

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That's what I'm waiting for.

My SRM and power control 6 are just heading into their 10th year of service! Been back to SRM for service 4 times, with 4 battery changes in the crank and 1 in the power control. In that time I have gone through a powertap hub (never again) - Quarq Cinqo (or S975 whatever it was) and a Quarq riken. Head units that have died include 2 Garmin 500's and a Garmin 705 - also a Garmin 305 but I never used that on the bike.

If I ever manage to kill the SRM I will report back..................... Probably not answering your direct question but I have a lot of love for my SRM.

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He who understands the WHY, will understand the HOW.

On that note I had an SRM PCVI battery died last fall. Bought it secondhand and it worked fine until I think I overcharged it and cooked the battery. Left it hooked up to the charging cable for a week straight (forgot about it).

My previous Garmin 500 after 5 years didn't hold a charge as well as it did when new but was still fine. Upgraded to a 520 only because I got sick of having to hook it up to my computer to upload rides.

I have 4 years on my ultegra di2 gear on my trek SC. Been raced in all sorts of bad weather, rain storms, etc.. Never a glitch, still works perfect, and that includes the original internal battery. I think I've literally had to charge that battery less than 10 times, and those were done each time out of precaution before a big race, not because it ever ran out of juice.

I’ve had my Edge 500 for about 8 years and it’s somehow still going strong. Keep thinking of upgrading but I kinda like that it’s practically an antique at this point.

I think we're more likely to see SRAM keep the blip box for TT setups, but redesign it so it can be better integrated into the frame, stem, or cockpit. This will require sharing their new design with part manufacturers and work together. No different than how Shimano started working with seat post manufacturers so they could get ride of their hideous 1st generation external batteries. And now the new Shimano Di2 can have the junction boxes mounted inside of road handlebars near the bar end. Yes, the wires still exist, but the pain is usually gone through once and you're done.

Removing the blip box completely means that not only does each blip need a battery, but each blip needs some smarts. Currently each blip doesn't even know if it's a left or right button...or has a way to communicate to the derailleurs. To build that into 4 separate blips likely means that a pair of blips might cost you $250 instead of $90. It also increases the size and limits the ability to custom mount them so that they are positioned ergonomically for each individual.

Yes, there are technical hurdles, but that's why I was talking about in an "ideal world".

Sram doesn't require the blip box for the road brifters, so they will likely eventually eliminate the junction box on the TT bike. Well, they will, or Shimano will. I don't see any reason that it would be any bigger than Shimano's current Di2 brake levers and shifter pods.


This is what a cell phone used to look like.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

My Specialized Tarmac is about 9 years old I think. Same age for my Garmin Edge 705 (I recently did change a battery), Same thing for Powertap. I use Ceramic rims in combination with dark green Swissstop brake pads. This combo for some reason does not wear either and is the same age as the rest of the stuff mentioned (I must admit that the bike was almost never used in rain). Any hint of upcoming rain and I would just take my city bike out for a ride.