So as the title suggests. This is a long-ish term review of the L-Twoo eRX electronic groupset out of China. Its not really a full groupset. It is more a shifting and braking set as it excludes the primary drivetrain stuff like the chain, cassette and chainrings / crankset.
So it consists of Front Derailleur, Rear Derailleur, Shifters, Disk Calipers, Battery holder (batteries sold separately) and wires.
What does longish term mean. I bought it February. At a price of 500USD. Had it installed on the bike since March. I've done probably 5000 or so km on the groupset since.
Setup and installation:
So the groupset is installed on my Felt AR Advanced Disk aero road bike. It is specifically my race bike. I have another bike for the BULK of my training but I tend to use the Felt on pretty much any ride of 3 hours or above. So that's basically races and weekends.
If you are a fairly competent home mechanic installation is pretty straight forward. And the supplied manual does a pretty good job of explaining it all. The English is pretty good there isn't much of the broken translated English that you get with alot of cheap Chinese products. If you still get stuck they have a bunch of installation videos on their YouTube to also help you along. My only gripe is the battery holder (which uses 2X 14500 rechargeable batteries) is a larger diameter than the standard Shimano Di2 battery case. So if your bike has a built in Di2 battery holder in the frame somewhere it might not fit. So I kind of just dropped the battery holder down into the frame via my seattube and hoped for the best. 😅 Hopefully it doesn't rattle itself to pieces after 10000km or something. 😅
Setting up the gears was also quite easy. They have a partner app for android and iOS, and again it does a good job of getting you through the set up. The English is good. One great thing about this groupset is you can set it to 10,11 or 12 speed through the app. So if you have an older 10 or 11 speed group you don't need to swap out your cassettes or chains to enjoy this group. And it has the advantage that if you are out on a long tour and damage something and all you can source are maybe older 10 speed spares you can and it will see you through. And you can upgrade to 12 speed at your leisure and you don't have to swap out the Derailleurs and shifters as you have to do with the other Big Three brands. I currently have mine set up with 11 speed with Ultegra R8000 cassette, chain and groupset. I did encounter an issue bleeding the brakes. I sat there for two hours bleeding the brakes on initial set up. It didn't matter how hard I tried I would get bubbles in the system. (more on this later) The calipers DO NOT use standard flat mount spacing. However they give you all the adaptors in the box to install it, and the calipers are 90g without any of the adaptors so even with all the adaptors they still come out lighter than the 105/Ultegra/GRX (7000/8000) Caliper.
PS. 7000/8000/810/610 are all the same Caliper and use the same mold and weigh the exact same. So if you ever build a frame save yourself the money and get 610 or 7000 calipers because they are made in the exact same mold (right down to the imperfections in the mold) as Ultegra
Weights:
I have found it to be compareble to my R8000 Mechanical. Here is how they compare
L-Twoo eRX Gen 3
Levers : 476g incl batteries.
Front Derailleur : 140g
Reat Derailleur : 286g
Caliper = 124g (no hose standard pads + mounting screws and adaptor plates)
Batteries + battery holder + cables = 90g
Total = 1240g (weight for the Ltwoo excludes the hydraulic hoses and fluid)
I had mechanical R8000 ultegra set up with TRP Spyre SLC mechanical disks.
Ultegra R8000
Levers: 420g
Rear Derailleur : 199g
Front Derailleur 90g
Caliper: rear155g, front 170g (including the front adaptor plate)
Inner Cables: 57g
Outer housings: 161g
Total = 1250g
Shifting:
Everything works hunky dory here. Not much to report. If you use the driveline (chain, cassettes, crank/chainrings) from one of the big three it should work perfectly. The big three are a known quantity at this stage so if you pair L-Twoo with Big Three Drive lines you should have no issue. Holding in the right levers buttons allows you to dump shifts in either direction. How fast you want it to dump can be set in the app. You can clear the cassette in about 1.5 -2 seconds. I don't know how that compares to Di2 but it seems more than fast enough for me. Going three shifts at a time it takes me a good 4 swipes of a mechanical lever to dump my cassette. Front shifting is great. I have not dropped a chain on the eRX. You can set up "gear protection" in the app which basically prevents you from cross chaining. I use this feature. No auto trim on the front mech. L-twoo removed that feature in a firmware update as Shimano's lawyers were getting a little hot and bothered by it. But the front mech can do micro adjustments in any gear. Shift a cog on the cassette and if you tap the button on the left shifter it adjusts the front mech. (if you are trimming the big ring tap the button closest to the brake lever if its the small ring tap the button farthest away from the brake lever)
Battery Life:
This is excellent. I used 1200mah 14500 batteries. So about 30% more capacity than standard 900mah cells. On my very first ride it went flat. However I think the system was still "learning" the batteries capabilities . After that first ride I haven't had an issue. Have charged the battery 3 times since I have had it.
Comfort:
When it comes to the shape of the lever hoods I must say they are fantastic. I find the levers tremendously comfortable. The levers have reach adjust so you can set the reach to suit your hands. The shift buttons are in the standard Shimano locations. The hoods are made of a harder more durable rubber than Shimano hoods. When I say harder I don't mean in a comfort sense. But I mean in a durability / longevity sense. I don't feel like I will wear through these hoods the same way I wear through Shimano hoods. I find after a year or so of use my Shimano hoods are reverting back into oil. I don't think this will be an issue with the L-Twoo hoods.
Braking.
Here we run into the first major issue I have had with the groupset. Remember I said I had issues bleeding the brakes? Well anyway first initial rides I had no issues. These lock up and stop just as good as my TRP stoppers I had on before and as good as my Ultegra Hydros on other bikes as well. However about mid April, remember I put the grouppo on in March, I lost my rear brake completely. And I could feel the front was starting to go as well. I didn't think much of it AT THE TIME. I figured I had boiled my brakes during a descent or doing evasive maneuvers in traffic. I rebled them, again bubbles no matter HOW HARD I TRIED (red flag). But got it as good as I could get it and carried on. Shortly after Aquelle Tour Durban I fell ill and the bike sat idle until July. Two weeks into July I lost my back brakes AGAIN!
Just FYI. I use Castrol LHM Plus fluid for what it's worth. I've used it for years with great success in my Shimano systems.
so let's recap.
Installed March.
Bled in April.
(June-July off)
Two weeks into July Brakes gone again. So essentially the brakes lasted two weeks (not counting the off period) after the April bleed. There has to be more here. So I stripped the bike and inspected everything. I couldn't see any leaks in my hoses. There was no oil pooling inside my frame anywhere. But then I found it. The rear caliper had those typical oil stains with the dust sticking to the oil dirt build up. I sat there bleeding the brakes more and more to see if my suspicions were correct. Two hours of bleeding, two hours of bubbles I took a rag and wiped the pistons of the rear caliper and my rag came full of oil. So the rear caliper was leaking. I opened the lever to the front brake as well and shone a torch into the reservoir and the fluid level was also VERY low for the front brake. I suspect it too is leaking but just not as severely as the back. Apon closer inspection and using air in a syringe and my calipers immersed in water I confirmed that there is a leak between the piston and the caliper. As circled in red you can see the air bubble squeezing out from between the piston and the caliper.
This is unfortunately the point at which it all falls apart for L-Twoo. They fumbled the ball at the doors of success. I contacted my Ltwoo contact immediately asking for support with the brakes. They blamed it on me and have denied me warranty. They point blank REFUSE to assist me with the brakes. So not a good look. We always warn people about Chinese products, not necessarily because they are bad products, but because if you need any after sales support it can be difficult to get anything done as you have no LOCAL port of call for assistance. And in this case it rings true. I have no recourse for what is a faulty product. And unfortunately it's not that it's faulty in a sense that oh the shifting isn't perfect or the it's a poor translation in the app or manuals or something. It's an actual genuine and REAL safety concern. You WANT working brakes when a Taxi pulls in front of you, or there is a crash in the elite bunch. You NEED your brakes to work at all points and having your brakes go spongy on you mid ride because the fluid has leaked out is a severe health hazard. So based on this alone. I CANNOT and I emphasize CANNOT recommend the groupset. I'm a sample size of one. So it's very likely I just got unlucky with a bad Caliper. And I haven't heard of anyone else having an issue like this. However if it was a faulty caliper and L-Twoo sent over replacement calipers the tone of this review would be VERY different."Yes my brakes were faulty but Ltwoo sent over replacement calipers you can rely on their after sale support!" sets a very different tone to "my brakes are faulty and L-Twoo told me to get stuffed". Especially when it comes to such a critical piece of safety equipment such as the brakes especially since they were faulty from day one. (even though I didn't realise they were faulty at the time) You can't put a price on safety. Working brakes especially on South African roads can mean the difference between life, death and serious injury.
For the time being I have removed the Ltwoo calipers and plumbed in my older Ultegra R8000 calipers and it works as expected. I will look into replacing the pistons at some point.
Value for Money.
I would say IF their after sales support was up to snuff I would say this is probably a better buy than 105 Di2 and Ultegra Di2. I mean if you are a weight weenie yeah spend the extra and get 8100, but compared to 105 Di2 I think this is the better choice. But we know the big S at least has warranty. You know you can go into any store in the country and get service. Ltwoo after sales is rubbish. So so based on that alone I would say the value for money proposition is just not there. You don't want to spend 5 Benjamins on a groupset only to have the calipers become paper weights on your desk.
Conclusion:
You know if it wasn't for the brakes and the *** attitude from Ltwoo after sales this would be a glowing review. Its a groupset so depending on how good you are with a wrench dictates the ease of installation. It's comfortable, it shifts good. Weight is decent comparable to the Big S. Battery life is great. Aesthetically I think looks the part as well. And the brakes when they DO work. Do a pretty dang good job. It has been ridden at multiple races around the country without so much as a hiccup (brakes aside) However unless you have a local source of support I CANNOT recommend this groupset. And that's damning because you don't just purchase a thing when you purchase a product but you are purchasing the manufacturers promise to support you if the product turns out to be defective. And unfortunately L-Twoo has shown that their word and warranty is worthless.
Ease of installation : 8/10
Shifting : 9/10
Weight : 8/10
Comfort : 9/10
Braking : 4/10
Value : 2/10
After Sales experience 0/10
Grade = Fail.
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