I won a Priority Classic belt-drive 3-speed
 

The family cycling review site Two Wheeling Tots did several Facebook giveaways in the month of December. I think I entered nearly all of them, and thus won a Priority Classic.

I selected the larger size white step-through, anticipating use with baby seats. I don’t know if I’m the target audience for this bike. Clearly they are marketing to beardy apartment-dwelling hipsters in a big Eastern city. The bike styling is bright and brown, and the dealership is in TriBeCa. I’m a schlubby dad and bike nut in hilly northern California suburbs.

The bike itself is MSRP $429. The philosophy of its design is light weight and low maintenance via simplicity. It has a belt drive, a 3-speed coaster brake hub, and that’s about it. The lower part count, compared to the 3x8 drivetrain and V brakes on a hybrid at similar price, allow them to spec an aluminum frame and lots of aluminum components, that don’t weigh so much and won’t rust. The fork seems to be the only major frame or cockpit part that is steel. The weight is listed at 25-27 lb, and that’s with puncture resistant 35’s and big saddle and a kickstand. The belt drive gearing is 67-30, giving about 45-61-82 gear inches. I’m not sure how well I’ll do with this and my bum ticker. I tend to like a low gear near 30 gear inches. The bike is sold stripped down but there are a lot of options for sale, including racks and fenders and a front brake. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a "deluxe" version for sale sooner or later with all that stuff installed. It ships with a pump, a box wrench for the wheel nuts and pedals, and an Allen wrench for the handlebars and seat post clamp.

I wanted to brag about this last month, but it didn’t seem like a sure thing. There was some kind of misunderstanding that kept it from shipping until today… I haven’t interacted directly with the company, all of that has been handled by Natalie the bloggess, so I don’t know what happened. It’s on its way now and I guess it will arrive late this week or early next. Merry late Christmas / very early birthday!

Cool! A free bike is a free bike. If the gearing isn't quite there for an extended ride, it would probably be a great neighborhood cruiser. Really, is there such a thing as too many bikes?

A free bike skips N+1 and moves directly to N+2.

Nice win!!!

I started a Priority Bicycles thread here a year or two ago which attracted a lot of comments.

People apparently liked the concept of a simple, maintenance-free urban bike and its caught on.

Congratulations on your new Priority bike. :)

Cool! I'd enjoy the opportunity to play around with a belt-drive IGH. I would have gone for diamond frame/blue though

Cool! A free bike is always awesome. Post some pics when you get it.

Prior threads. (pun intended)

http://www.bikeforums.net/hybrid-bic...er-2014-a.html

http://www.bikeforums.net/commuting/...nus-bikes.html

@NormanF is clearly the local cheerleader :-D

Very cool. There is something appealing about the simplicity. Enjoy!

Nice! We are going to see pictures aren't we?

The bike arrived today and I tossed it together. From the East Coast to Sacramento, it took one calendar week to ship. Left on the doorstep with no signature required.

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Typical bike-in-a-box. With a pump!

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Tools, pedals, and a bottle cage. But no bottle, go fig

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1441/...77c293d8_c.jpg

Short help's better than no help at all, right, Chewie? (Do I have some weird filter going in this shot?)

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More coming...

note: this post edited by yrs trly with some email feedback from Priority.

The bike is pretty light. Few components, plastic drivetrain, aluminum frame. I judge it about the same as my commuter. Mid twenties? The color scheme is nice. Generally, almost all the plastic is black plus the headset, almost all the exposed metal is shiny, all the soft parts are brown.

Some problems! So I only rode it around the culdesac. The headset was notchy. (Priority says this is normal, and you can only feel it without the wheel and bars installed, and definitely not when riding.)

So was the front hub. (They say the same thing, I'll keep an eye on it.)

The rear feels fine, it should be as it came from a Shimano factory. The shifter was out of adjustment, the hub made clicking in 2nd and more clicking in 3rd. (Turns out this is normal for Nexus 3 hubs)

Fork ends were badly bent out of alignment. Not obvious why, the packaging was thorough around here. (This is a known problem and they are changing their packaging design for the next production run)

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1466/...37ec1816_c.jpg


Crankset looks like it went straight from the sand casting to the paint booth. Seat post clamp looks the same way. Functional, not nice. Pedals threaded in rough. The crankset is clearly based on a MTB triple, you can see the indent for the outer ring, the pulley is mounted in the middle position, and the inner position (visible in the shot of the BB welds) has not been drilled.

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I bent the pedal wrench with my stubby hands... no telling what a real gorilla could do. (This is another known bug being fixed on the next run)

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Attractive bike from ten feet away. But where am I going to put it?


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Some shots of the welds and drivetrain. (And the VTech Go Go Smart Wheels Ultimate Amazement park in the background)

The welds are typical inexpensive aluminum bike stuff, it doesn't look much different from my Hardrock.

The belt is not a Gates and not a center drive like a Gates, but instead the conventional toothed timing belt type. The pulleys each have one side open - the front has the flange on the outside and the back has the flange on the inside. The rear end includes tensioners with a built in roller. (The roller keeps the belt from skipping under high torque that would unload the lower side tension.) The belt feels pretty tight.


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So I need to get the headset adjusted and I want to get the front hub adjusted too before I go for a ride.

A feature I didn't catch a photo of. The fork has rack mounts, eyelets low on the outside of the blades. I was not expecting to see this and since I saw the left one first I wondered if I had some kind of disk brake mount!

Bonus bottle cage installation tutorial

Interesting, detailed write up, thanks. The Priority is one of the bikes I considered last year. Instead I settled on a similarly styled Globe Carmel via craigslist to see if I could still ride at all. Like the Globe well enough I'll keep it as an errand bike even if I add something lighter just for exercise and longer rides.

Looks like you have a fine assistant to be sure the bike plays in tune. :thumb:

That's a really sharp lookin' ride you won. I wonder how a belt drive would handle a mid-west winter...

nice! that is super awesome. congratulations on the new steed!

i entered too but i think i just entered one of them.

after you get the issues worked out, do tell us what you think after cycling on it for a bit.

Nice! I think I've been installing bottle cages the wrong way according to the video - my cat likes to help me with maintenance but that usually means getting in the middle of what I'm doing or sitting in my lap while I work around her.

The low fork eyelets are for front basket struts. As seen here: Priority Front Basket - Accessories - Order Now

This looks like a dangerous 4-link trapezoid and not a safe triangle, am I imagining it?

http://www.prioritybicycles.com/medi...asket_side.jpg

It sure looks to me like it's relying only on bolt tightness to not swing downwards onto the tire. I wonder if there's a good way to hang the top of the basket off the head tube. Maybe a spurious brake hanger and paracord with a suitable knot? Or twisted wire?

You're right about those cranks. Geeze, ugly. Not my cup of tea (the bike) but a free bike is a free bike. Very odd about the fork dropouts. Did it come with a plastic spacer installed?

I wouldn't put a lot of weight in that basket. Or maybe you should, put 25 lbs of books in, then drop the front wheel 3" and see if it collapses (while not actually riding).

On the plus side, you could probably drop a 1-2 lbs just by buying an old XT/XTR crankset with worn-out chainrings and swapping it in.

Yep, and stuck in a block of stiff foam rubber too. You can see it under the handlebar in the unbox photo. So it shouldn't have taken any damage. On the other hand they are wiiiimpy. So soft I have to wonder if they got bent just from having the spacer shoved in.

(Priority says they are changing the packaging on the next production run.)

The only way I see it swinging down onto the tire is if that bracket connected to the fork crown bends (a lot) or pulls loose from the fork. It's hard to tell how beefy it is from the angle of the photo. That said, it doesn't look like the sturdiest design but I think it could hold a backpack with a few books in it or a purse.

That's true, it's not like the longer struts that it would rotate with loose bolts, the basket would rely on that upper strut not wanting to stretch or bend. But unless I am mistaken, the prize bike doesn't actually have a basket, so no worries.

I am curious to how well the coaster brake works in combination with the unconventional drive train (pulleys and belt). Can you control/modulate the braking action as well as with a typical coaster brake-chain combination?