New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable • Hacker News Board

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#101

Post by analog31 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #34

leoh wrote: post #9

Great chain, but the Gates Carbon Drive is likely a superior technology. Europe has largely adopted it, but it is rare in the states. I have a Riese & Müller bike with a Gates Carbon Drive and it is absolutely lovely. Silent, but best of all, no grease on my pants or hands, ever. They handle dirt and dust super well (just dry off and wipe down with a cloth/no gears get jammed with a sealed planetary gear system). It…

I've destroyed a number of Sturmey Archer planetary drive clutches - the square cross-shaped bit which transfers force from the sprocket holder to the drive - by just using them, leaving me wary of planetary drives. While I've also gone through derailleurs they do seem to handle power better than planetary drives and have the additional advantage of feeling far more like a direct drive. One of the advantages of a bic…

Then you're a stronger cyclist than me, because I've ridden S-A AW hubs for decades and have broken Zero of them. I've have had them open to determine that they tend to stay in pristine condition under normal use.

But the common IGH's do come with specs for minimum gear ratio front to back (2:1, I think), suggesting an implied torque limit. I've always wondered which part was the weak link.

The cogs wear out under normal use (I've replaced a couple so far) but that's true on derailleur bikes as well.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#102

Post by canofbars » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #78

How is the shifting? Sounds a bit too rigid. Smooth shifting is probably more important for performance than those last promilles.

If it can't bend you could use it with a gearbox which is how belt drive bikes work.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#103

Post by brudgers » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #22

leoh wrote: post #9

Great chain, but the Gates Carbon Drive is likely a superior technology. Europe has largely adopted it, but it is rare in the states. I have a Riese & Müller bike with a Gates Carbon Drive and it is absolutely lovely. Silent, but best of all, no grease on my pants or hands, ever. They handle dirt and dust super well (just dry off and wipe down with a cloth/no gears get jammed with a sealed planetary gear system). It…

If you want to shift gears using the carbon drive you have to use an internal gear hub, which has a lot less range than a traditional derailleur and is less efficient. So if you are riding a racing or mountain bike a chain system is probably a better way to go. Also it looks like you can't shift under load with the internal hubs which is a problem if you are trying to climb hills quickly.

My previous bike had a Shimano Nexus 8 speed. It would shift just fine under load. My current bike has a Sturmy Archer 3 speed and doesn't.

Geared hubs are great for riding in traffic because you can shift while stopped. Pulling harder with traffic up to a light and braking aggressively, and switching to the right gear while waiting for the light to change.

Like everything it's a tradeoff. For me, geared hubs make a bicycle a more useful tool. Less fragile. Less maintenance. Idiot friendly static adjustment.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#104

Post by Aaargh20318 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

owenversteeg wrote: post #48

leoh wrote: post #9

Great chain, but the Gates Carbon Drive is likely a superior technology. Europe has largely adopted it, but it is rare in the states. I have a Riese & Müller bike with a Gates Carbon Drive and it is absolutely lovely. Silent, but best of all, no grease on my pants or hands, ever. They handle dirt and dust super well (just dry off and wipe down with a cloth/no gears get jammed with a sealed planetary gear system). It…

I live in the Netherlands and have traveled Europe very extensively and I have never seen one single belt driven bike... I have a feeling that it'll be a long time before Europe widely adopts them :) Does look very cool, though.

I’m Dutch and have a belt drive on my e-bike. They are mostly used on high-end (read: expensive) bikes.

Great system though, completely silent.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#105

Post by pengaru » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #66

I'll tell ya what I see: no rollers. Pins rubbing (wearing) both sides of the tooth. Including the back side, which will never exert any forward longitudinal force on a chain unless it's made of magnets. I also see a highly suspect FEA diagram on the right, where teeth not even engaged still show non-zero stresses (lighter blue, not the darkest blue), indicating that the color/stress scale has been changed compared t…

I suspect lack of need for rollers is a primary feature.

Conceptually, to me, the new interior bits serve as a sort of individual tooth holder that is free to rotate with the tooth as the tooth orbits the axle. So there's not much friction at the tooth:holder junction as the sprocket turns.

That friction is now occurring at the narrower intersection of a hinged tooth holder and chain link. Being a narrower hinge joint, just the length of a chain link's thickness, it has less surface area for friction, and less room for debris ingress etc.

Conventional chains rotate a pin across the sprocket's thickness, and AIUI use a roller to try keep debris out of and lubricant within that interface to reduce friction. This contraption takes it a step further.

You can actually envision the tooth holder as analogous to the roller in a conventional chain, just with less surface area at the twisting intersection. They've obsoleted the conventional roller.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#106

Post by analog31 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #78

How is the shifting? Sounds a bit too rigid. Smooth shifting is probably more important for performance than those last promilles.

There's no shifting. These chains are for single speed drivetrains, e.g., track bikes, but also possibly single speed freehub and internal gear hub bikes. This could be one of those things that starts its life as a performance upgrade for competition use and either does or doesn't make it into the world of everyday cycling.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#107

Post by usrusr » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

frabbit wrote: post #90

alistairSH wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. On a mountain bike, replace the chain every 50 hours of use, or annually and the rest of the drivetrain will last for years. Or, if you're dumb and lazy (me!), ride the whole lot into the ground and replace the whole bike every few years because #shinynewtoy!

50 hours of use I assume this is a typo for 500?

500 would be 5000 km even at just 10 km/h which would be generous (but doable) for a Shimano chain even under roadbike conditions (where this would be roughly 200 hours). Mountain bike conditions will increase wear level a lot and they'll probably be a bit faster than 10 km/h as well. I don't know if it is really as bad 50h, but I've stopped mountainbiking when suspension forks ceased to be exotic. It also differs regionally: riding muddy in a place where the air is full of corrosive ocean spray will require far more chain replacement than riding in the Utah rock deserts.

If you ride a chain until it stops working you'll probably reach those numbers. But then you will have to replace the entire drive train which is far more expensive. The chain is the cheapest part and replacing the chain a bit earlier than absolutely necessary will greatly increase the durability of more expensive parts. As a little bonus you'll repeatedly get the joy of riding a new chain. Replacing at the right time is cheaper and more enjoyable at the same time.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#108

Post by canofbars » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #12

stiray wrote: post #7

As a guy who ignored the chain on his first bike with XTR gears and had to replace whole drivetrain - yep, I would buy this chain. No question asked, as long as they guarantee me that it wont be stretched.

Just accept that chains are the consumable #1 for a bike and be happy. Shimano chains are absurdly cheap anyways.

Also replace them before they are fucked. Get a chain measuring tool and when they get half way worn just get a new chain. If you wait too late you fuck the gears and those cost way more to replace.

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#109

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

leoh wrote: post #9

Great chain, but the Gates Carbon Drive is likely a superior technology. Europe has largely adopted it, but it is rare in the states. I have a Riese & Müller bike with a Gates Carbon Drive and it is absolutely lovely. Silent, but best of all, no grease on my pants or hands, ever. They handle dirt and dust super well (just dry off and wipe down with a cloth/no gears get jammed with a sealed planetary gear system). It…

[deleted]

Re: New bike chain claims to be faster, more durable

#110

Post by Lerc » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

ruined wrote: post #39

petre wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People concerned with dirt do not concern themselves with chain efficiency but rather stuff that removes dirt.

reliability in adverse conditions is an important facet of any design. nobody cares about a new hyperefficient vehicle if it has to operate in a vacuum

People keep telling Elon Musk that.