Back in April, I picked up my latest bike, a Specialized Roubaix Expert. I loved my original, more basic Roubaix (as I noted in my account of my century ride in 2015) and had high hopes for its successor, with its SRAM Rival electronic gear change. Sadly, it has proved my most troublesome, unreliable bike ever. I’ve decided to blog about it in case anyone else is having similar problems with their SRAM-equipped bike.

I had a hint of the bike’s unreliability on my very first ride, just hours after collecting it from Dees Cycles in Amersham on Good Friday 2023. The brand new Roubaix was making a distinctive squeaking sound, rather than the smooth as silk ride you expect from a maiden journey. I had to take it back to Dees several times before that irritant was banished.

Far more seriously, the bike had a habit of shedding the chain when I changed up onto the bike chainwheel. As I pushed the dual gear change paddles, I would hear an ominous clanking noise as the chain went beyond the large chainwheel cogs, and flopped onto the outside of the chainwheel. I soon found that shifting straight back down would retrieve the chain and place it back onto the small chainwheel. Bizarrely, if I then tried another shift up the chain would move obediently onto the large chainwheel without incident.

This was a tough fault for Dees Cycles to fix. The issue occurred almost at random. For example, the bike performed flawlessly on the 45 mile Prince’s Trust Palace to Palace charity bike ride from London to Windsor on Sunday 1 October. Yet as I cycled home, after cycling around 61 incident-free miles that day, the chain moved beyond the chainwheel again.

Dees tried everything to solve the problem. They adjusted the indexing of the gears. They stripped the bike down and rebuilt it – twice. They even replaced the front derailleur as a SRAM warranty repair. This seemed to have done the trick: my first ride afterwards passed without incident. The next time was a different story, as the old problem happened on my first front gear change.

In despair, I contacted Specialized UK chief executive Simon Homer. Dees had told me that SRAM had finally admitted that this was a known fault with the Rival version of its eTap electronic groupset. The recommended solution was to replace the Rival front deraiileur with the superior Force version. Dees swapped them over while I waited on Friday, and I had no issues on a 50 mile test ride to Marlow and Henley on Saturday. That’s no guarantee but I hope the problem is isolated to the original Rival mechanism as suggested. I should add that the bike made a near-constant squeak as I pedalled, but I trust a quick degrease and relube will solve this.

It has been a very disappointing experience. Getting a new bike is a joyful event (I should know – I’ve had a few…) and finding repeated problems is demoralising. I have been a fan of SRAM’s very intuitive electronic shifting for over five years, and before getting the new Roubaix had cycled over 10,000 miles trouble-free miles on SRAM kit, including Land’s End to John O’Groats. But I will probably opt for Shimano’s Di2 system when I get my next bike.

I should stress that Dees Cycles have been brilliant, and Dan, Sean and Jason have spent hours trying to solve the problem. I will happily recommend them to anyone.