View Single Post
Old 12-04-07 | 01:29 PM
  #6  
Velo Dog
Senior Member
20 Anniversary
 
Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,811
Likes: 0
From: Northern Nevada
Interesting bike...an ex-neighbor of mine, a retired aircraft engineer (helped develop the original Lear Jet), spent a year or so working on an auto trans for bikes as a hobby, and he had one of these around for awhile. I rode it a couple of times, and it worked fine, though nothing about it appealed to me as a cyclist.
What I always wonder about this idea, especially now, is where the market is. Back in the friction-shift days, you could at least justify it by saying that shifting a bike was a little bit tricky--it was possible to get between cogs. These days, though, bikes are effectively automatics with selectors anyway. It's impossible to miss a shift in a properly set up indexed driveline. Seems to me the only demand for something like this would be among people who aren't going to ride very much no matter how easy you make it.
Velo Dog is offline  
Reply