Chain was Yesterday….Carbon drive belt is today!
It looks like that the belt technology breaks into the bicycle world. There have been many attemps to create a belt system which can replace a chain. They all failed! But now we see some of the big bicycle manufacturer using the belt drive…
The refernce according belt drive systems comes from Gates. A company who owns a broad belt portfolio mainly for industrial applications.
Their product is called GATES Carbon Drive.
This issue was already discussed at Bicycle Design.
Dobbybrain shows a beautiful TREK bicycle.
German magazin Aktiv Radfahren has a picture of Nicolai Argon TR bicycle.
And finally the single speed guys from Karlsruhe / Germany try the belt.
Intresting to see on all the frames is the possebility to open the rear dropout to put the belt into the frame triangle. Let´s see which version will be the future standard.
All of them use the Gates system!
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[…] New Carbon Belt Drive Don’t know if this has been posted before, a quick search found nothing related. From the site "Chain was Yesterday….Carbon drive belt is today! It looks like that the belt technology breaks into the bicycle world. There have been many attempts to create a belt system which can replace a chain. They all failed! But now we see some of the big bicycle manufacturer using the belt drive… The reference according belt drive systems comes from Gates. A company who owns a broad belt portfolio mainly for industrial applications." Link Chain was Yesterday….Carbon drive belt is today! Hubstripping.com […]
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August 22, 2008 at 10:46 am
Great! So what is the hold up?
I was expecting the system to be mostly available aftermarket by this date, according to the CarbonDriveSystems website.
But recently the website was updated and re-branded with Gates name & logo newly added, and the proposed delivery dates have vanished from their site. Meanwhile, production bicycles from Spot seem to be available.
I’m totally down the collaberation between Spot / CDS in the US and Gates UK, Orange and Nicolai (?) — good to have a standardized system — but they’ve now had nearly a year to work that out. Where are the goods?
August 22, 2008 at 5:40 pm
It will be interesting to see how this goes, but I don’t know that I’d buy one. I’m probably shooting myself in the foot by saying this, but I’ve not really had an issue with chains and I really like the thought that if there is a problem it can be solved by changing out a single link rather than scrapping the whole thing.
August 26, 2008 at 4:18 am
I doubt the system will become available as an aftermarket upgrade. You need a frame that lets you split the chain or seat stays to install the belt or elevated stays.
September 14, 2008 at 6:57 pm
The thing that has killed off belt drives in the past has been poor efficiency compared to chain drives. If that could be overcome, belt drives would be a good choice for hub geared bikes. Yesterday on a long bike ride in the rain on my hub geared bike, chain wear resulted in the chain becoming slack enough to drop twice. A belt drive would not wear like this.
Rather than splitting the chainstay or seatstay, it would make more sense to elevate the chainstay out of the way of the drivetrain, as used to be done on some mountain bikes. Simple, faster to service and no issues with frame integrity.
September 27, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Oh dear, I want one!