221–226 of 226 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
50 hours of use I assume this is a typo for 500?
No, not a typo. 50 hours for expendables and suspension service on a mountain bike (I'm assuming it's actually used as a mountain bike). For, me that works out to 2x season. The cassettes are $300 and the chains are $40. So, the chains are treated as 100% consumable/disposable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is being marketed to track cyclists who have none of those issues. More generally, novel drivetrain products often seem to take off early in the tt/tri world which also don't really have to deal with those issues. It's also worth noting that anything that all else being equal, improved efficiency goes hand in hand with better longevity. As an example, applying a hot chain wax is a winner in terms of watts, but i…
You can't really make all things be equal and get increased efficiency and longetivity for most cases. The trade-off are explicitly made to have reduced longevity to have better efficiency. Take tires for example. A low rolling resistance lightweight XC tire will have significant advantages over a dual casing 2.6" DH tire. The XC tire will smoke a DH tire but not have better longevity on dirt. The XC tire will be slo…
Tyres generally trade traction off against longevity, plus, yes, specialization is a big consideration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bought a Spot Ajax with an Alfine 11 speed hub. Shifts well and has a good spread. I’m a recreational bicyclist though, I have no idea how it “performs”.
For recreation/commuting/city use, the Alfine is fine. Unless Shimano has revamped it in the last few years, it isn't particularly robust and doesn't work well for high-power use (mountain biking, in particular).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The belt is a closed loop and under high tension when installed. Your frame needs to be able to be opened to let the belt in, then your sprocket pack needs to be able to move backwards, so you can put tension on it.
> then your sprocket pack needs to be able to move backwards, so you can put tension on it I am assuming that's what the poster meant by putting emphasis on his frame being a fixed gear one. Those normally have horizontal dropouts to put tension in the chain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s not the case here though. The design I linked is a legitimate attempt at solving a real problem. Whether it works as well as intended or not is a separate issue.
The design as plain obviously wrong. The only "legitimate" part there is trying to part people with their money for zero benefits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The design as plain obviously wrong. The only "legitimate" part there is trying to part people with their money for zero benefits.
I'm not a mechanical engineer or anything remotely like it. Can you explain why the design is wrong and especially explain why you think it's a dead end that can't solve it's problems via iterating?
This expensive ceramic bearings are exposed and will experience significant wear. Properly insulating them would wipe out whatever miniscule gain in efficiency they claim as the insulation increases losses.
Finally reducing chain friction (which is already very low on a tuned drivetrain) to some fraction (that has yet to be proven for real conditions) is tantamount to snake oil in my opinion.
These are just few. I could go on but it is not worthy the typing and mental efforts.