The Tour de France is a bit early in the season for any teams to be testing disc brakes, so the new Focus Izalco Disc road bike was nowhere to be seen around the Ag2r-La Mondiale tent. That didn’t mean there wasn’t anything new to see, as the team is fully immersed in testing the presumably upcoming SRAM wireless electronic shifting.
Coincidentally, the SRAM folks were standing around their team truck as we walked up, but wouldn’t comment about it in any way. So, officially we have no new info from all of the coverage we’ve already posted here, here, here and here. But, we’ve got a hunch it’s going to make its consumer debut fairly soon. In the meantime, we do have some fresh closeup pics…
Rather than just a few riders on the prototype system, they appeared to have the whole team running it on both their “A” and “B” bikes, but only on the Izalco Max road bikes, not the TT rigs.
Not much has changed from last time we got a close up, except they’re no longer hiding the SRAM logo on the shifter/brake levers.
It’s still a single button lever, which strongly suggests the operating procedure we uncovered in the patent filing is accurate – one side shifts up the cassette, the other shifts down, and simultaneous presses shift the front off whatever chainring it’s on.
Small buttons and LED lights (which weren’t lit) on the fronts of both the front (above) and rear (below) derailleurs are likely used to sync and to indicate battery life.
The motor unit is likely housed in the front section of the rear mech.
Oddly, one of the limit screws appears to have a tool-free knob on it and the other is tooled.
We’re convinced the battery packs on both derailleurs are interchangeable and slot in from the top. There appears to be a latch that pivots on the B-knuckle that locks the battery into place. Without any sort of visible USB port, we’re guessing they’ll include standalone chargers so you can leave your bike in the garage and charge the batteries anywhere that’s convenient.
The levers might get branding, but they’re still hiding the logo on the cage. The pulley wheels indicate upper and lower specific placement.
The rest of the bike is equipped with SRAM Red cranks and chainrings sandwiching a Quarq power meter, Zipp wheels and a mostly Fizik cockpit.
The Izalco Chrono used for the TT stages keeps the Zipp wheels and SRAM drivetrain, but switches to the standard mechanical group with Return-to-Zero bar end shifters. The bars switch to Profile Designs…
…with a couple very different setups for different riders. One bike used zero spacers and placed the extensions under the bar. The other used a ton of spacers and set the extensions at the top of them with some custom arm rest workings:
Note the simple foam padding cut to shape and the extra mounting sections for the arm rests were ground off to save weight and drag (click to enlarge). Perhaps required on these particular extensions, but the shift cable housing was kept external and simply taped to the bars.
