extranormal

I’ve had my belt-drive Spot for a year now, and because people are so hesitant to make the leap to the belt drive system, I thought I should write a review. I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, but there’s a lot to cover.

Last year I was in Colorado and ordered the frame in person at the Spot factory. The shop was small, but busy, organized and as clean as a kitchen. The crew looked serious and fit, and Gavin was a pleasure to deal with.

I ordered the ‘cross frame with exactly the build that I wanted, my preferred cable routing, fender and water bottle mounts, lack of canti brake bosses, etcetera. I also ended up choosing to design my own powder coat job, which I payed extra for, and doesn’t look anything like Spot’s own paint schemes. Spot’s in-house frames come stock with single-color powder coats from Spectrum Powder Works, which does top notch work, and offers amazing multi-color powder coats as an option.

The frame only took a few weeks to finish, but Spectrum was backed up at the time due to NAHBS so I didn’t get the frame till three months later. Again, I chose a much more complicated powder coat than is standard, so a l assume it would ordinarily come more quickly.

The bike is lavishly spec’ed; Chris King ISO hubs laced to DT Swiss 430 rims. (29er/700c disk specific rims without brake tracks), SRAM Force cranks, Avid BB7 (road version) brakes, Hope floating rotors,Thompson stem and post, Deda road bar, and Tektro road levers.

Avid makes the BB7 brakes in a road specific version, which is matched to the amount of cable pull provided by road levers. There is no hydraulic road lever on the market at this time, much to my disappointment. I requested that my frame have only tabs for full length cable housing, so that if a hydraulic system becomes available, I’ll be able to use it. Full cable housing works well for the cable actuated brakes too though, I’m using Dura Ace housing and cables, which are stainless steel which helps contribute to the bike’s almost total lack of needed maintenance.

The BB7 brakes have incredible stopping power, but a lot of annoyances. They are maddeningly noisy. When they and the rotors were new it was really traumatizing every time I touched the brakes, and even now that they are broken in, they howl if they get slightly damp, slightly cold, or if anyone looks at them the wrong way. When they’re warm and dry they’re quiet, but still have a slightly unpleasant metallic scraping sensation while braking. In spite of all those complaints, they still give the best stopping power currently available with drop bars, stopping power that translates to incredibly short stopping distances and easy use even with small hands.

I know some people say that it’s actually unnecessary to have this much stopping power on a ‘cross bike, but that is ignorant. I’m to the point now where I get a little panicky feeling the first time I grab the brakes on my Record spec’d road bike because I’m so used to the gobs of effortless braking power on my Spot.

I live in Brooklyn, NY, and I use this bike as my daily commuter. I ride it about a hundred miles a week, so I’ve put about 4000 miles on it so far. The weather here ranges widely, from 0 to 100 degrees, with lots of moisture.

Enough back story, here’re my impressions.
The Spot Brand fame is beautifully crafted. It invites up-close study with flawless welds and great details. Bottle cage and fender mounts are absolutely clean. The rear dropout arrangement, which splits on the drive side to admit the belt, is elegant and very cleanly executed. To be honest, the frame kind of outshines the IF fork that I used to save money, and which stupidly has fender mount points that are totally inaccessible once the brakes are installed.

The Spot frame has a very very nice ride. It’s a difficult topic to write about objectively, but this is a frame with a fine tune. Not just stiff, but bright, not just nimble, but poised. The rear end remains completely calm under extremely hard acceleration, in combination with the heavy-but-muscular steel fork, the bike has less unwanted flex than anything else I’ve ever ridden.

Off road, the Spot is most at home. It has uncanny rear wheel traction under hard effort, and in combination with the IF fork and massively powerful Avid BB7s, it feels totally composed when descending. I did a cyclocross race on it, and was told afterward by spectators that I had been the only one descending a particularly steep technical section. The thing is, I didn’t even feel like I was taking a risk, the bike descended calmly and stopped at the bottom without a twitch.

For daily use, I have it spec’d with road tires and very close fitting fenders. I ride in traffic a lot and that means lots of sudden full-strength accelerations. It does not feel as lively as some bikes I’ve ridden (possibly the belt’s fault), but the frame always remains unperturbed and confident. The frame is also very calm and steady in corners, when traction goes from grippy to slick and back again, it never tweaks or twitches.


The Belt
The belt drive doesn’t require any special expertise, and owners will be best off if they are willing and able to fine-tune their own machines. Over the last year I have continually tinkered and adjusted and tweaked to get it just right. It has not been overly problematic, but it requires an accurate tune, and most bike shops aren’t experienced with them yet. The guys at Spot are very nice, and are happy to help if you get stuck.

Setup is simple because Gates did an excellent job with the whole system, which is intelligently designed and nicely finished. The rear pulley is used together with a set of spacers that add up to the same thickness as a cassette, so when all are used with the pulley, the cassette body is filled and a regular lock ring is used. When I installed a 55 tooth front pulley, I found that the ring rubbed on the chainstay, but Spot sent me some spacers to go between the spider and pulley, and that solved it. I’m now running a 50 tooth pulley, which has no clearance issues. To change the rear pulley, simply grab it with a strap wrench instead of a chain tool, and loosen the lock ring.

I have the older belt design, now Spot is using the Center Track system, so I won’t go into the precise setup too much. It will suffice to say that the rear dropouts are very well designed, the entire dropout slides forward and back, so the belt line and tension can be adjusted without loosening the wheel, or affecting the disk brake. Once adjusted it stays adjusted, and removing the wheel to change a tire does not affect the belt tension. Once the wheel is back in place, the belt will be properly tensioned again.

It takes some getting used to that the proper tension for the belt is surprisingly taught! For the first few months I had it, I would occasionally jump the belt under hard acceleration, and I kept making the belt tighter to prevent it, always fearing that I was going to damage something if I over tightened it. But when I got the special tension meter tool that Spot offers, I found that I had it at the correct tightness, and could even run it a bit tighter. Only time will tell how the Chris King hub will hold up. So far it’s still perfect though. It’s important to run the belt tight enough because skipping it is unnerving, and drains one’s confidence in the bike, and Spot tells me that it can damage the belt.

The belt is extremely static, but certainly has more stretch than a chain. It is exactly as efficient as a chain according to an independent study (look on Gates’ website to see the results), but it is not completely free of stretch. If the belt is adjusted just slightly looser than recommended, it will jump when you stomp on it, which makes a catastrophic feeling and sounding clank. Looking at it on the stand, it doesn’t seem possible that such a tight belt with such large teeth could skip, but it can if you’re strong. Technically, I have never made the belt jump when it was correctly tensioned, but I feel like I could if I really tried. Using a lower gear ratio would make it less likely to skip because you wouldn’t be putting so much standing torque on it when accelerating from a stop.

Having said that, the belt is a dream to ride. It’s not just quiet, it’s silent. The bike literally doesn’t make any sound apart from the tires striking the pavement. Pedestrians won’t know you’re there until you enter their field of vision. Power transmission attains textureless perfection under the right conditions. Back pedaling the system feels strangely rough, for some reason it doesn’t mesh smoothly in reverse, and soft pedaling the system forwards with little or no tension creates a soft vibration. But under steady watts, it finds it’s happy place and becomes perfectly smooth, all sensation of meshing teeth disappears.

When the belt gets wet it starts to make a noise as it meshes under power that can sound like something is out of adjustment. Nothing has ever come of it, and it still works fine and returns to it’s usual silent self as soon as it dries out.

The teeth of the pulleys have taken a polish. It’s interesting to see how evenly distributed the wear is on the surfaces of the pulley teeth. The blue plastic coating on the inside of the belt lasted for several months before wearing through. Now the surface of the belt looks like little threads embedded in black polyurethane.

Between the lack of aluminum dust from rim brakes and the lack of chain oil, the bike stays amazingly clean. It really illustrates how much oil gets spattered all over a regular bike. The whole bike, including the drive train, wipes clean with water. No soap needed, nor even a scrub brush. All you will find on the rag is dust and sand. You can grab the belt with your hand after riding it thousands of miles and it doesn’t make your hand dirty. There’s nothing to get on your clothes. It’s a really cool unexpected advantage.

A regular chain drive has numerous points where metal contacts metal. Numerous is an understatement. The result is a myriad of tiny rattles. They are missing from the belt drive system. Dropping the bike from a few inches reveals a total lack of rattles, just a soft “bong” noise as it bounces on it’s tires.

The only way to accomplish a multi speed belt drive bike is with internally geared hubs, which are inefficient, heavy, and clunky. I still think that chains are the best solution for multi speed applications. But when a single speed will work, there is no doubt that belt drives have all the advantages. They are much lighter, much quieter, much cleaner, and much longer lasting. I hope that people will gain some confidence in the system from this review, stop deliberating, and go get a belt drive!

Cynikal 

outstanding writeup!

austy37

even better moustache!

xB_Nutt

Nice! More pics!!

palladio

Sweet ride! I'm about to do a similar build for my NYC commuter.

flargle

I'm happy that you like your bike and the belt drive. It's great when people are stoked on their ride.

That said, I'm currently riding a SS 29er on a standard frame with a Soulcraft tensioner, and the last worry I have is noise from the drivetrain. I dunno, maybe my ears just aren't that sensitive?

Also, if you wanted to swap gears at a race, would you also need extra belts? Not that it'd necessarily be a bad thing, but I'm curious how this works. I mean, it's a hassle to swap gears with a chain & tensioner, too.

Werkin

The cure for the noise is Swiss Stop 4 season disc brake pads. I've tried various single compounds, none do it all well like the Swiss Stops.

Libraio

It's only when you switch between belt and chain driven bikes that you notice. When I ride my single speed WTF witch has a chain on it I don't feel it's noisy. But when I ride my District to work the next day I notice that there's 'noise' missing. If I hadn't already bought parts to go 1x9 on the WTF I would save up for a Centre Track setup for it.

extranormal

Yes, for different gear combos, you have to switch the belt. It's probably too much trouble to try to do at a race. There are quite a few steps, and a lot of fine adjustments to do when switching the belts.