How Do You Put a Hook Pinion Gear in a Consew Machine UPDATED
How Do You Put a Hook Pinion Gear in a Consew Machine
Always since I began mountain biking over a decade ago, I've hated one mountain bicycle role with a burning passion: the derailleur. Oh, they've gotten better–much amend–over the years, but not skillful enough to keep the errant stone or stick from ripping them off on occasion and burning a couple hundred-dollar hole in my wallet. And don't fifty-fifty go me started on shifting issues–dropped chains, concatenation suck, improperly tuned parts, mud, water, grit, rust, ice–at that place are so many ways that a standard derailleur drivetrain system can exist batty, if yous will.
When I observed how prevalent gearbox transmissions were condign at Eurobike this year, I secretly rejoiced. "Perchance all of my drivetrain woes volition be resolved one time and for all!" I hoped. But in order to decide if the gearbox was the magic potion that would cure all of my ails, I first had to hop on 1 and give it a become.
Specs
The most common gearbox visitor on the market today is Pinion, and the Pinion drivetrain is specced on bikes from over 60 brands in Europe. Based out of Frg, Pinion offers several different models of their gearbox, including the just-released C1.12. The new C-Line also has C1.ix and C1.6 models. The C1.12 model offers 12 speeds with a 600% range–compare that to SRAM's new Eagle 1×12 drivetrain with 12 speeds and a 500% range.
Not but is the range of the C1.12 larger, merely the transition between gears feels a chip more than natural than Eagle, because the steps between each gear are exactly the same–17.7%. On Eagle, some of the gearing jumps are massive and some are very pocket-size, only in the gearbox, each one is identical and easy to predict.
Ane of the major benefits of the gearbox blueprint over any derailleur drivetrain system is the ability to shift as many gears equally you'd like, quickly and instantaneously with the twist of the grip shift. Not merely that, gearbox advocates are quick to point out that you can shift while benumbed–you don't need to exist pedaling. What they are slower to mention is that youhave to exist coasting–more than on that beneath.
Of course, the Pinion gearbox is heavier–compared to Eagle XX1 ane×12, i of the lightest drivetrains on the market, the C1.12 is nearly a pound and a half heavier, at ii,100g.
Previous models of the Pinion offered up to 18 speeds, and so this new gearbox is actually a reduction in the number of gear options. Still, equally noted above, it still offers more range than most people will ever need, so the reduction in the number of speeds is no big bargain. The benefits of the new C-Line over the previous P-Line include a smaller size–the gearbox is more compact than ever–and lighter weight. The new box outside is made of a lightweight magnesium alloy that is 33% lighter than aluminum.
Annotation that while all the folks at the Gates/Pinion booth talked almost was the new C1.12, I was sent out on an older P1.12 for testing. Presumably, the C1.12–released at Eurobike–is so new that frames have non yet been constructed to employ it.
One of my main concerns with the Pinion system was drag–when you see all the gears that are moving internally, it seems similar the system would offer immense resistance. However, the CEO for Pinion pointed out that while the gears are spinning, merely 2 are engaged at whatever one time, making information technology a pretty efficient system. Compare this to the Rohloff internally geared rear hub, where multiple gears are constantly in contact to produce the gear ratio that you require at any given fourth dimension.
Ane other major advantage that the Pinion organisation offers over the Rohloff is where the weight is located: at the lesser subclass. The lesser bracket is the heart of gravity on a cycle, and the more than weight a pattern can position there, the improve. The trouble with the Rohloff is that it throws the entire residue of the bicycle off by positioning extra weight in the rear hub, resulting in poor handling.
When it comes to immovability, the gearbox comes with a v-year guarantee, and the but required maintenance is to change the oil in the transmission once a year.
That's it.
Compared to a regular drivetrain, on which I routinely schralp parts and am constantly working to keep in guild, the Pinion is an incredibly worry-complimentary system! But of course, you still have some exterior drive components–and exactly how much maintenance those crave depends on the organisation y'all're using.
The Pinion is uniform with a standard concatenation to drive the rear cycle, simply thank you to the internal transmission, it's besides compatible with a Gates Carbon Drive chugalug arrangement. I've tested a Gates earlier in a singlespeed model, and institute it to be quiet, efficient, and worry-free. If you add together the chugalug to the Pinion, y'all've essentially created a 100% maintenance-gratis drivetrain–you lot don't even need to lube your concatenation!
In fact, that's the setup that I tested at Interbike this yr. The Pinion P1.12 was paired with a Gates Carbon Drive on a Viral Skeptic Titanium hardtail 26+ frame.
If you lot want to buy this specific bike, the Skeptic sells with the frame and the entire drivetrain (gearbox and belt drive) for $5,000. Then you merely need to add cockpit components, fork, and wheels and tires. While it's not inexpensive, you are getting a boutique titanium frame mated to expensive, proprietary drivetrain parts. The Gates Carbon Drive without a transmission is expensive past itself, and adding the Pinion but jacks the toll higher.
So in theory, the Pinion should offer better gear range than the best drivetrain on the market and a no-hassle, maintenance-costless user experience. But how did it perform out on the trail?
Existent-Life Examination Ride
After dialing in the tire pressure level, fit, and intermission settings on the Viral Skeptic, I was off to the singletrack. The first thing I learned at the booth before I hitting the trail was that the drivetrain volition not downshift under load–pregnant that if yous're cranking hard, you need to stop pedaling in order to shift. If you're spinning like shooting fish in a barrel, you might be able to get abroad with a shift, and upshifting is slightly easier nether moderate load, only ultimately if yous desire to shift–y'all need to stop pedaling.
In theory this sounds simple plenty, but I found it to be much more hard in practise. See, here'due south the problem: the last place yous want to cease pedaling is when y'all're cranking up a steep loma. On a normal drivetrain system, yous always hear that you're not supposed to shift under heavy load. All the same, with practice, you can withal shift while climbing–you simply need to briefly salve some, merely not all, of the tension on the drivetrain to go it to shift. With the Pinion gearbox, on the other hand, all of the tension must be relieved, meaning you must finish pedaling. I establish myself totally stalling out and losing nearly all momentum while attempting to shift while climbing. This the last thing I want to happen!
Pinion advocates are quick to note that if you see a hill coming or y'all are surprised by ane, that you can chop-chop dump a bunch of gears at the bottom of the hill to become into an easier gear to climb in. The matter is, if you drib it into a gear piece of cake plenty to spin all the manner up the hill while you're at the very bottom, again, you are killing almost all of your momentum.
The key to riding a mount bike well is conserving every bit of momentum that y'all possess. This means braking as little equally possible, coasting as fast as possible, and carrying all possible speed and power into each climb. To do this, you need to go along cranking fast through the bottom of the valley, then downshift as needed every bit you climb, all the while adding power to the system via the pedals. In my exam, I found this impossible to do on the Pinion drivetrain.
I think the factors above contributed to an overall feeling I had aboard the Viral Skeptic: it felt slow.
Wearisome is non a feeling you want forwhatever mountain bike. Heck, my 5″ fat bike can feel fast oft plenty! I found the Skeptic, on the other hand, to exuded slowness and sluggishness. Unfortunately, my test ride wasn't long enough to decide exactly what created this sluggishness–the shifting issues noted in a higher place, the weight of the drivetrain, possibly the tire pressure, or even the geometry of the Skeptic itself.
"But what about shifting multiple gears while benumbed?" You might ask. "Isn't that a big do good?"
In my stance, if y'all're coasting on a mount bike, you're either lazy, or going so fast that yous've already run out of gears in your drivetrain. If you lot read any books or picket videos here on Singletracks about mountain biking fast, such as Ned Overend's Mountain Bike Like a Champion: Master All the Skills to Tackle the Toughest Terrain, 1 of the key skills to mount biking fast and skillfully is to e'er stay on the pedals, and to stay off the brakes as much as possible. Sure, there are plenty of times when y'all're screaming downward a fast, technical loma when you lot don't need any more speed and you are braking hard, but the number of times when you become from that situation to quickly jamming up a super steep hill and you need to dump a lot of gears, all at once, are very few and far between.
However, if y'all practise find yourself in this situation often where yous're surprised by steep hills and don't have adequate fourth dimension to downshift on a derailleur system, you have some other bigger problem: yous're not looking far enough down the trail to come across the obstacles coming. Over again, this is some other bones mount bike skill that y'all should be employing no thing your drivetrain. Consequently, touting the ability to downshift multiple gears speedily when surprised past a steep climb seems more like a crutch for an unskilled mount biker rather than an advantage for someone who'due south been riding for a long period of time.
I Wanted to Love It
Don't go me wrong: I wanted to love the Pinion Gearbox. It solves then many bug that I have with standard drivetrains: parts wearing out, parts getting destroyed, the abiding maintenance required… and for those reasons alone, I might still similar to own i.
Still, the last affair I want from a component upgrade–and a costly one at that–is for that component to make me slower. I've written before about why I'm over racing, simply in my feel, even casual mountain bikers don't like it when their machine slows them down. You don't need to be a racer to relish going fast on your mountain bike. As such, I see this being a major bulwark to widespread gearbox adoption.
However, at that place'southward a pretty major caveat to this entire article: this was just a short test ride at Interbike. Information technology's possible that with more practice and more feel, the time required to terminate pedaling, shift gears, and resume pedaling could be shortened.
Beginning mountain bikers have no end of trouble learning to shift a derailleur drivetrain system–even with 1x drivetrains becoming mutual identify, it isn't an intuitive organisation. The same could be said for gearbox transmissions–in that location is a steep learning curve, and time could be required to larn the nuances of the organization.
That said, I run across fifty-fifty that steep learning bend to be a barrier to gearbox adoption in the mountain bike market at big. If other riders hop on a gearbox system and take the same experience I had–that they only feel boring–who'south going to desire to drop the substantial amount of coin to buy a gearbox bike in the hopes that they'll go used to the system over time? Nobody.
Caveat number two is that it's possible some of the shifting harshness and slugishness of the bikes overall has been resolved by the latest C1.12 drivetrain. I really wish I had been able to test the latest rendition in the Pinion line, just alas, that was non to be.
Conclusions… Or the Lack Thereof
Later my test, I came abroad with the feeling that I needed to spend more than time on the organization to truly grade an administrative opinion. I too tin can't aid just wonder how much improvement the latest and greatest addition to the Pinion line would offering the issues noted higher up. While I was grateful to get on a gearbox arrangement for the outset time at Interbike this yr, more testing is definitely required, and when I do that testing, I won't bother riding on the older gearbox models.
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How Do You Put a Hook Pinion Gear in a Consew Machine UPDATED
Posted by: matthewtherhang.blogspot.com
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