Last week’s spy shots were a little fuzzy, but Von was back at it at the Midwest Cyclocross Finals and captured these glamour shots of the prototype SRAM electronic derailleur.
It’s all still speculation, but these do look awfully quite finished now that they’re sitting still. Our guess is that black box is the brains of the operation (or at least the rear mech) and the black section protruding inward from the parallelograms is the actuator. The small black knob facing out the back is likely the lower limit screw, but could be a tuning adjustment.
Unlike the CXX1 prototype we spotted at a NC race that uses a very XX1-like horizontally moving parallelogram setup, this one’s moving at an angle like a traditional rear derailleur…which is expected since it’s going to be paired with a front derailleur.
From the front, the motor unit disappears.
This week’s batch of pics gives us our first look at the front derailleur, which uses a top entry for the wire and a reasonably sized motor/control box on the top.
That crop came from this full driveside view, which shows (presumably) the battery taped to the stem. If that’s what it is, it’s pretty small, which could help keep SRAM leading the lightest-road-bike-group contest.
It also gives us a look at the outer face of the button, of which there’s only one that we can see. Double tap as electronic? Seems logical, and we’d guess not all that difficult to do. One outer button with enough spring tension to provide a tactile “click” but that surrounds an inner button that is depressed with a longer throw of the button and overrides the first signal. Again, all speculation, but it makes us all the more interested in trying it out!
