On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 13:23:14 -0000, Nigel Cliffe wrote:

Peter Clinch wrote:
Mark T wrote:
www.bikebiz.com/news/29367/Carbon-belt-drives-are-standardised

Now that there's a new standard out there, does anything stand in
their way?

Initially, inertia from the innate conservatism of the bike market.
There will naturally be suspicion of a New! Improved! Thing replacing
something that, for all its faults, works pretty well and we're
familiar with it. Fixing something that doesn't seem to be borken,
in other words.

It will be a shame if belt drives just die through the conservatism of the
bike market. For a utility bike, a belt makes a lot of sense - no oil and
should last longer. I can see how it may work well off-road. I can't see
it ending up on race/audax machines (even though it is carbon fibre!),
except, possibly, in the recumbent arena.


Efficiency, beloved by racers and marketing droids, will be a big issue.
Bigger than it should be, probably; and murkier, certainly.

My recollection is that previous versions of belt drives were estimated to
be less efficient that a well-lubricated new roller chain. Belts do not
lend themselves well to derailleur gear systems, and that would add the
typical lower efficiency of hub gearing.

Cleanliness is a possible advantage - but if you are going to have a hub
gear, you might as well have a chaincase; which would probably also remove
or reverse any durability advantage.

Howevere, this will be (sort of) "new", and manufactures love "new" - it
means that they can sell stuff to (some of) the installed base.