Thursday, March 11, 2010

How Belt Drive will Break the Chain

(photo courtesy of James Huang at Cyclingnews.com)

The Gates Carbon Belt Drive.

The belt drive bring brings some fantastic features to your bicycle while killing off quite a few short comings of the chain drive system. The largest simplification is the lack of moving parts in chain links that require lubrication. Goodbye greasy pants! Two, the polyurethane belt draped over aluminum teeth is claimed to last twice as long as a chain while running smoothly and quietly. Yeah, you can't shift it like a chain to achieve a wide range of gears, but you can always run it on an internal geared rear hub to achieve some flexibility.

The root of my appreciation for the belt drive's traction in the industry here is that the belt is one piece and has no way of separating for installation on your bike. So the solution is to separate the rear triangle on your bike. Seriously. If you made bikes and someone came up to you and said we have this rad system, but it will require you to re-engineer your bike so you can split the frame for installation would you have done it? Keeping in mind that this adds design time another layer of construction complexity to the frame cost, the belt's future would be dim.

Why is splitting the frame a big deal? Well usually the frame is welded into one solid piece or molded into one piece if its carbon. Two, removable and separable joints are weak and act as a point of failure.

The way the belt drive is being accepted is fantastic as it is superb system for the urban cycling market. Manufacturers have tested themselves to craft some unique solutions to make the system seamless and strong is further proof that the belt drive will have a place on our bikes.

I look forward to every innovation possible to make it easier for people like my parents to enjoy riding their bikes more often.

Posted via email from michaelcody's posterous

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