[Closed] Hydraulic Shifting for MTB

A chap in the states tried it years ago. Scott Allen fife enterprises if I remember correctly. SAFE shifter I think they were called. Worked really well by all accounts and retro fit to existing mech and shifter. Just suffered from being too far ahead of their time.

The Acros system looks lovely but not at $1999!!!

KISS

Whats the advantage over cables? Must be heavier to have a master cylinder. slave cylinder and a tube full of fluid compared to a cable

Yep very expensive but maybe once more developed or mass produced costs could drop

I think it sounds more promising/reliable than electric shifting

I mean what's happens if you're out on the trail and your battery conks out

TandemJeremy - Member
KISS
Whats the advantage over cables? Must be heavier to have a master cylinder. slave cylinder and a tube full of fluid compared to a cable
POSTED 34 SECONDS AGO # REPORT-POST

I suppose you have a point but.....,

What was your opinion when they brought out hydro brakes

Lighter shifting, less maintenance, no more gritty cables, or linked cables. Get the price down to a few hundred quid and I'm very interested. I think a retro fit system for existing shifts and mech would increase acceptance though. As cogs and chains get more tightly packed, I can see this improving shifting accuracy an awful lot.

Easy for companies like Hope to develop as well

I've been thinking about something similar for a while for my Rohloff.
With two full length cables and a twist grip, in muddy conditions I have got to the situation where I need two hands to change gear.
I was thinking of a small hydraulic pump and reservoir on the 'bars and a small hydraulic motor on the hub.

Hope are already prototyping a remote reservoir for road sti. They just need the slave cylinder and they're laughing. I hope they're reading this.

Must be heavier to have a master cylinder. slave cylinder and a tube full of fluid compared to a cable

The link does not work for me can others see it?

http://www.acros.de/PRODUKTE/SCHALTUNG:::3_134.html

They fiddle the figures by not having a relatively heavy return spring on the mechs, and some rather nice cnc work on everything.

Whoops crap link sorry..... [url= http://www.declinemagazine.com/content.php?itemid=6026 ]TRY AGAIN[/url]

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I like. Except for the two cables per mech (what it looks like).

With a remote dropper, and a remote fork lock out, and two brakes, you're going to have 8 cables running around the bike. Just with 2x10 and a rear brake you will need 5 cables going down top tube or down tube. Think it would look kinda messy.

like. Except for the two cables per mech (what it looks like).

With a remote dropper, and a remote fork lock out, and two brakes, you're going to have 8 cables running around the bike. Just with 2x10 and a rear brake you will need 5 cables going down top tube or down tube. Think it would look kinda messy.

Internal routing..... job done!! 🙂

Or if they were really clever they could combine all the hoses so you could brake and shift at the same time or the other way round

Internal routing..... job done!!

Like the sound of that.

frankers - hydro brakes have significant functional advantages

dont see the advantage been running same cables on my bike for 2 years and never had a problem or needed to adjust more like a solution to a problem that never was

How easy is it going to be to adjust them in the arse end of nowhere when you smack the mech and bend it on a rock though? At least with cable you can usually have a play and get a few gears working alright.

Actually, as there's no return spring, if you smack it, you just position the mechs by hand and they will stay there until you move them somewhere else. Much easier than trying to finish an epic with only one gear!

Hmm, going to have to read more about this then!

I love the idea, really want this and I think it's the way forward. I just don't have that sort of cash. Couple of hundred quid over XTR components and maybe but at £2k, it's not happening for me just yet.

all they have done is buy the german company that already made them, slapped their name on and given it more press, years old this stuff

5roc or something

Good idea but I think electric offers more possibilities and weight savings. Would shat my pants if I came off and had this on my bike... would just make riding my bike too stressful, counter productive

Would shat my pants if I came off and had this on my bike... would just make riding my bike too stressful

???

I'm waiting for Bluetooth mechs controlled by a brain-ultrasound device.

Would shat my pants if I came off and had this on my bike... would just make riding my bike too stressful

Sorry that wasn't very clear... as it is £2000

More shit to go wrong, no thanks!

Less shit to go wrong. Yes please.

very bling but very costly would need to come down massively in price as I see very little advantage over a cable tbh unlike brakes which are much better as hydraulic

TandemJeremy - Member
frankers - hydro brakes have significant functional advantages

How do you know that hydraulic gears don't? Do you have any experience of both systems?

Cable shifting works perfectly well. What advantage hydraulic gives I cannot see. More complex, finer tolerances needed extra weight

hydraulics are great for transferring lots of force - hydraulic brakes make sense.

i haven't really thought about hydraulic gears, i guess maybe they'd cope with grit and water and mud a little better than cables, but at what cost? - discuss...

(and i don't just mean price)

yep - press the hydro shifter too hard and it'll push the derailleur right off the bike...

Hydro shifting has already been obsoleted by electronic. Shimano will bring their Di2 electronic shifting technology over to MTBs. Its already being used in cyclocross and appears to be plenty robust enough for off road. Shifting at the press of a button which can be placed anywhere you want, mechs that trim themselves so no need to adjust cables, sequential shifting if you want- none of that can be done with hydraulics.

I like the idea - no need for 2 cables surely as you could apply positive and negative pressure to the system? As it's not moving a massive force, the cables are unlikely to collapse...
Ican see a grip shift type shifter with a 'screw' effect on the master cylinder?

DrP

As above, I think electronic will remove any need for hydro.

Electronic , what happens when the power dies? Hydro will keep going!!

K.I.S.S

The battery for Di2 is re-chargable and one charge lasts for months. Battery life really is a non-issue.

Di2 seems to be proving very reliable and the battery lasts plenty long enough that you'd have to be pretty deliberately negligent to run out of power.

TJ - as simple as makes sense. Bet you use indexed shifters.

what about running brakes, shifters, uppy downy seatpost off 1 fluid reservoir?
would it save weight?
would heat build up in the brakes mess it up i suppose
also if you changed down a gear squeezed the brakes and raised your seatpost at the same time would the bike implode?

More importantly, has anyone noticed that you shift in both directions with the same paddle, but with pressure applied to it in slightly different ways? Surely this would lead to many shifts in the wrong direction, leading to much frustration, during a race or when generally riding hard?

TandemJeremy - Member
K.I.S.S

simple is as simple does 😆

The hydro mech is an imaginative piece of engineering providing a lightweight shifting system that performs functions that current cable actuation can't.

It may or may not filter down to consumer level bikes, who knows - but it's aimed at the cutting edge bike racing environment, not some old geezer codger cogging up a fire road.

I think imaginative engineering and people who think 'can it be done, let's have a go' should be applauded rather than derided with some hackneyed sound-byte critique.

Looking forwards, not backwards, is how new things get done........

I like the sound of the electronic gears - then I ride behind with some EMT pulse device and knock out peoples gears at will when racing them - or force them to change into a big ring combo just at the start of the hill we are about to climb, and then shoot past them 🙂

hilldodger +1

luckily TJ is not the market and the market will dictate what happens here. My money is on hydraulic shifters being ubiquitous in 10 years.

more things to bleed...

'can it be done, let's have a go'

ive got 1x10 di2 on my mtb, works perfect, its the future, once trickle down tech makes it more affordable (its never going to be cheap, or replace cables in lower end models) it will be for common

k-edge are pushing it most at the moment

[url= http://www.ki2bike.com/ ]here[/url]

Junkyard
should we not give some thought to if it is worth doing?

'We' can decide if it's worth spending our money on but if someone wants to invent or develop something (as long as it's not overtly destructive) then I think it should be encouraged 🙂

can i do it rather than should i do it may not always be the correct approach see the Sinclair C5 for example.

Sure, many 'bright ideas' crash and burn, but I'm sure the C5 stimulated peoples imagination and probably encouraged other budding engineers to 'have a go'....

TurnerGuy - Member

more things to bleed...

Claims to be a sealed maintenance free system, anyway I reckon it's easier and quicker to bleed a hydro line than change a cable.
Plus it's more eco friendly as all you need is a few ml of oil rather than a few metres of braided wire, plastic outer and rubber grommets...

yes can see your point

Zero cable friction? I bet it shifts as crisp as a November morning!

Junkyard - Member

yes can see your point

How jolly damn civil of you old chap 😉

I can see others are more conservative and cautious but ideas give me brain-wood.
I don't apologise, I'm a full-on technophile & love new ideas and ways of thinking, always will.......

Zero cable friction? I bet it shifts as crisp as a November morning!

Reckon so 🙂

I also like the fact it can adapt between 1/2/3 x 8/9/10 speed easily, only needing to change the rear wheel and chain/chainrings, what's that - about 10 minutes work 8)

I got no problem with people having ago at doing stuff. As you say - its folk who try stuff that leads to advances.

toys19 - Member
My money is on hydraulic shifters being ubiquitous in 10 years.

Well its more than 5 years old already. Not snowflakes chance of it being anything than an expensive to for technophiles

Well its more than 5 years old already. Not snowflakes chance of it being anything than an expensive to for technophiles

yes TJ we all know how much you know about engineering/industry/product development/marketing.

Life is full of people who want to put new ideas down and be generaly negative about new technology and progression

I think the idea of hydro shifting has good potential to make it onto mainstream mountain bikes 🙂

I wanted them back in 1996 when Scott Fyfe did some. Gutted then never made it over here.

this isnt new technology, im sure i can remember something like this way back in the early 90s.
i reckon if it was made reliable and light people would buy it.
think about it, a cable works perfect when its new, but if its winter you will notice after a week (regular/daily use) that the shifting performance has degraded.
if it was a similar price to, say, xt/xtr i would probably buy it, at that price level it would be worth having for the reduced maintenance.
obviously, there are downsides, it would be more time consuming to change a shifter or mech for example.
however, it sounds like electric is already happening.
bring it on, i say.

Frankers - Member
Life is full of people who want to put new ideas down and be generaly negative about new technology and progression

How pathetic sounding..... I must be drunk, sorry

Cable shifting works perfectly well. What advantage hydraulic gives I cannot see. More complex, finer tolerances needed extra weight

Cable shifting doesn't work perfectly, it goes out of whack all the time, it's really badly effected by mud and water and it requires quite a bit of force with dexterity (inside the shifter). Hydro IS the way forward but no-one has made a solution yet that can out-sell (and so establish a decent market) shimano/SRAM mass produced tat.
There's absolutely no reason at all for hydro to be heavier than cable, none at all. The lower (than brake) pressures seen in the shifter would mean cyl walls could be thinner, hoses could be ultra-fine and don't need to be metal-walled or braided, they can be super-light plastic hoses like magura HS33 type.

I did once draw up a full retro-fitting solution for shimano shifters but it was bulky and would have been knocked off, it needs to be made as part of the kit, not retrofitting, but it would have proved the operational point that the shifting would be smoother, more precise and long lasting goodness.

more things to bleed...

Surely hydro is a backward step??
Hydro works for brakes well as it is an analogue setup. Remember 'feel'?

Gears are digital. There is only a set number of positions to shift to.
Electronic must be the way forward. 789or 10 speed is no more than a firmware flash.
An electronic system can switch gears faster, and because the system does not use Bowden cables and can calibrate itself, it should require less maintenance.
Although that said the development has been very slow -SRAM had a system in 1994

For rohloff: http://thelazyrando.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/electronic-rohloff-shifter/

Shimano di2 is getting "tested" by the roadies, once it's proven (and the price comes down)
And Once they bring out the alfine 11 kit, I'm in 😉

Campag electronic is being tested too. Seems pretty reliable so far

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/race-tech-campagnolo-electronic-at-tour-of-flanders-29779/

I think KISS is a useful rule of thumb but doesn't bear repetition as a mantra of wisdom. Humans like complexity - as individuals, we're complex, and relationships multiply that exponentially 🙂 Cables are subject to stretching, stiction, seizing and splitting, and I've welcomed their replacement for brakes (a much more safety critical application in which the excel)

The trouble as I see it is that cables are good enough for gears, where they were marginal for brakes, and any alternative system would struggle to achieve the market share needed to achieve affordability 🙁

SRAM 1:1 with full length outer. 3 years. replace the inner annualy, clean it every 3 months. No mis-shifting. Until derailleurs are dead, this will be the pinnacle.

I can't really see the point in this, I'm afraid. It still doesn't overcome the fundamental problems of an exposed geartrain: their vulnerability to the elements, rocks, falls. All it may do is make shifting more precise, with less requirement for adjustment, and with (perhaps) less shifter and mech force needed. The vulnerabilities are still there, only now at greater cost if you take some damage.

Hub gears are, to my mind, a much better answer. All that needs to happen is that the weight needs to come down.

And the efficiency to improve. The reason we still run chain driven gears is because nothing else matches it for efficiency. It's difficult to ignore the drag in a gear box when you've only got human power to drive it.

TBH, I find that well installed xtr cables work well enough for me in pretty much all conditions so I'm not particularly interested in electronic or hydraulic systems. I seem to go through rear mechs quite frequently thanks to some questionable line choices and crashes. Anything that costs more than an X7 mech is a bit too much for me.

I would like to see more research going into things like this though: http://www.pinion.eu/en/

Seems like the most sensible place for the gears to me.

minor point for those thinking there are better systems, bikes have been around a while and there very few new ideas, it is all refinements of existing ideas. We use derailleurs because they work, chain drive because it is efficient, cables because they are cheap and reliable.

I really fail to understand how some people can have so much trouble getting a piece of cable to pull a mech left and right. Why were exposed cables developed, because they actually help shifting performance by reducing the flex and length change inherent in the cable outers. Look at how cable outers are made, Brakes are spiral wrapped for flexibility and gear cables are a bunch of wires running the length of the cable outer with a very slight spiral.

Derailleurs do have downsides, which is why Sachs, Sturney Archer and laterly Shimano have done work on hub gears. But they are heavy, they are less efficient, there is not a huge amount you can do to get round that. Tools for the job.

I disagree with the term "heavy".
Where is the evidence?

I disagree with the term "heavy".

take a price point, what is the weight of a derailleur set up, what is the weight of a hub gear set up.

compared to cables I see hydro gears as a huge improvement.

But the benefits of electronic shifting are massive - simple button presses, automatic ratio selection etc etc. when you are at one end of the cassette and need to shift to a different chainring the system can select the next ratio for you without you having to think about it and it should do it cleanly without the risk of a clunky change.

cables because they are cheap and reliable

Cables are NOT reliable. They gunk up in the mud and wet, and need maintenance. If you have not had this happen to you then you are blessed, it happens to everyone else.

when you are at one end of the cassette and need to shift to a different chainring the system can select the next ratio for you without you having to think about it

That doesn't sound good. I don't want it changing rings without me expecting it, could cause all sorts of issues.

Hmm, I wonder how long it'll be until somebody invents an 'automatic derailleur'(?) system... It will of course be useless and we'll have much the same response to it but I'm sure some people will buy them for the 'look at what I can afford' side 😕

Mrmo: I asked for evidence. In the absence of any supporting your argument I submit this:
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/stu-mcgroos-lets-put-this-alfine-weight-issue-to-bed-once-and-for-all-thread

I've already designed the automatic. It uses one of those infinitely variable hub gears that someone's invented (something to do with ball bearings inside) and a torque sensor to keep the pedalling speed within a user-defined range.

Why doesn't someone just stick the gearbox from a DAF on a bike? All problems solved.