Originally Posted by
StephenH
Sounds good on paper. The problem is, a lot of things sound good on paper.
My concerns- which may not amount to anything in reality-
-Weight
-If either the drive belt or the gearbox give up the ghost mid-tour, how hard is it to get a new one shipped to you? And how hard to install it in a motel room?
-How long with the maker of that gearbox be around?
FYI, the Gates belt sounds fine. But if I remember correctly, some friends of mine that use one on their tandem mentioned it used one that Gates no longer makes. So when it goes, it's back to chains or something different.
It seems like the belt would be easy enough to have on hand and have ready to be mailed out or even carried. Also if worried about future availability, you could buy a few and have them on hand stored in optimum conditions I guess. I don't imagine they deteriorate too quickly if stored properly and I am sure they would outlast an old codger like me.
Not as easy an option for the gear box though. Spare gearboxes would be too expensive for an individual to keep around and it would be hard to figure out which parts might fail to stock individual parts. Hopefully it is very reliable.
As far as the "on paper" thing... I have not looked into the numbers lately, but when they first started pushing the gates belts for bikes I looked at the numbers and thought the numbers being used to push the belts were pretty misleading. They seemed to be using what looked to me like pretty much worst case wear and efficiency numbers for conventional chains. I'd assume they probably used best case numbers for their own product. I thought the numbers they used at that time were misleading at best. It looked to me as if you really needed to factor in aesthetics like drive train cleanliness and so on pretty heavily in order to make them come out favorably in the comparison. That may be well and good if those factor were really important to you, but if you were heavily swayed by the performance numbers IMO you were being mislead.
I don't know if the belts have improved much in the years since I looked into them so maybe all of that is moot, but i doubt it.
I did like the notion of a nice clean drive train, but was not sold on internal gearing and wasn't sold on the belts having sufficient advantages over chains.
I am sure folks will manage fine and enjoy the nice clean drive train, but I'll pass and feel good about the simplicity and serviceability of a chain driven derailleur equipped bike for the foreseeable future. I am willing to be convinced but haven't seen anything that tempts me away from chains and derailleurs yet.