burnthesheep wrote:
Biggest thing is can you transfer your fit over to it as-is? Or would you have to buy stuff to make it work? I'd look up a chart just to be sure. How long are the cranks on it? Can you reuse your existing cranks or is it a BB swap? Would you need to buy new ones anyway?
Also, is this for TT or tri? I've no idea about that Shiv but some bikes on the TT versus the tri version you may lose out on some speed "making it work" for triathlon instead of getting the tri specific version with it all thought out ahead of time. Those years the Shiv triathlon had that front hydration thing in the frameset. For example. The TT does not. Meaning the TT would have some BTS or BTA to get hydration back.
No idea how nice that worked out on that bike. I'm sure there are owners here.
As for Di2. I love it and recommend it. With the caveat, on a tri or TT bike I feel it's a moot point without the brake lever Di2 shifters. So, needs to have that. Just IMO. It makes climbing and cornering much nicer than reaching to shift.
I don't have a Shiv, but I just bought a PremierBike with Di2 , and came from a Cervelo P2c with mechanical.
Honestly, imo Di2 is overrated. Sure, it's nice, and the clear advantage it does have is having an extra set of shift buttons on the basebar so you can shift from the basebar as well as the aerobar. That's pretty sweet. But I have found that mech was just as good on my TT bike, if not better - I can shift faster on the mech by flipping the lever from top to bottom, and also use the lever position as a 'gauge' for what gear I'm already in instantly. That's one of my gripes about Di2 - it can be hard to know what gear you're in and how many gears you have left in each direction.
I was looking forward to Di2 mainly for the lack of maintenance (cable changes) which is also a plus, but honestly, with m, shift cable changes hcecan realistically be completely outsourced to an LBS as you don't even need to do it once a year, and you'll still come out thousands of dollars ahead for Di2.
I find it annoying that when I'm going from a ripping downhill to a very steep uphill, that on my DI2 I have to press the shift button like a maniac, to jump to the right gear, whereas on mech, it's just a big flip of one or both levers. In retrospect, as long as the cables were completely internally routed, I'd just get the mech and save the $2000 and call it a day, and leave the rare shift cable changes to the LBS, as you'll probably need to do it less than 8 times in a decade. The Di2 basebar shift buttons are nice, but anyone who's ridden mechanical for more than briefly won't even find this an issue without them.