While pedaling along with the Ride 2 Recovery Memorial Challenge ride, Shimano brake engineer Wayne Stetina paid a visit to Jason at Freshbikes and let him snap us a few pics of what’s likely to be the forthcoming 2013 Dura-Ace component group.
All parts are accounted for save a rumored Flight Deck revamp, and thanks to some printing on the chainrings, it looks like all the 11-speed hearsay should be correct. The official unveil is this Friday, June 1, at which time we’ll be able to present all of the technical info, specs and more…and there’s a lot more. Until then, all we can do is speculate based on these images. And Shimano would like us to point out that anything you’re seeing before the production units hit the floor are prototypes are no guarantee of what’s actually coming. That said, this is the second time we’ve seen four-armed cranks. These appear asymmetric, with two of the opposing arms looking a bit wider than the others. We’re guessing this is all about pedal force distribution where it counts.
Wayne mentioned he’s put thousands of miles on the parts, and it looks like there’s a bit of wear on the hoods. Shaping looks quite ergonomic, and if that finger groove means one-finger braking while riding on the hoods, that would be pretty sweet. Note the Flight Deck logo on the top of the brake lever.
The hoods themselves look very similar to the current generation. Levers look to have a bit more outward flare.
Shimano’s road brake calipers (and mountain, for that matter) are highly regarded. These look to have an articulating linkage, although configured differently than SRAM’s new Red brakes. If the cable looks frayed here it’s because it’s been in service for many, many miles.
Best we can tell, the small linkage arm is connected via a pivot to the brake arm controlling the pad on the cable entry side. As it pulls the other arm (with logo in this image), that arm raises and pushes (rolls?) a cam that closes the other arm with more force. On the front brake, you can see a set screw that looks like it would let you adjust the force generated by the linkage.
Speaking of leverage , the cable mounting point on the front derailleur looks like it’ll have a ton of torque over the cage, which should translate to easy shifting. It could mean a lot of cable pull, though.
Other than styling, the only major functional change we can see is that the cable bolt moves forward all the way to the front pivots for the parallelogram. Again, we’re guessing this simply gives more leverage over the spring to make shifting easier. This is one of the few pieces here that’s less aggressive looking than the 7900 piece.
What do you think? Loving the looks? See anything we missed?
