I hope this will be deployed on town bikes with geared hubs. I would think that they would sell really well. The no lube and clean bike thing would bring a new wave of casual riders on the roads.

The elevated stay design is a way to keep from having to "break" the stay or belt to remove it.

this is just the auto industry's latest conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily bicycles. its starts with belts, next thing you know your fixed gear comes standard with a V8 that gets 4 mpg.

Ever hear of belt wear and slippage,if you are over 200 lbs do not even think about it.I rode one of those things and would never buy one.

I think the coupling solution for these belt driven bikes is very sweet too.

http://i30.tinypic.com/2nkpi7r.jpg

This is a monstrosity.

Yeah. It is.

Does it make sense to have a rear axle that is wider than your handlebars?

Tandems have wide wheels at the hub - the wider the spokes reach onto the hub, the stronger the wheel. Sadly, not many tandem hubs really utilize the added space that tandem dropouts allow for.

It's funny how universal some of the newer technologies seem to be across the different framebuilders. Disc brakes, sliding dropouts, belt drive, internal hub gearing, etc. A lot of them are even fixed gear.

I agree, wide flanges = stronger wheel but the beast above is missing out on 40mm on each side of the hub. I guess its a good demonstration piece but not really worth it on a production bike. That being said, I understand that this show is less about the production and more about the "look what I can do" aspect of custom buidling.

I want to ride one of those belts so bad.

I'd say that this is technology that needs time to mature. It's a good idea, and it's nice to see the experimentation under way. For right now, though the SS CX bike looks cool, the two prominent questions are:

1. How does the belt-drive system hold up under insanely nasty CX conditions (i.e. mud, sand, dirt, grass, water...)?

2. Just how much torque can the system take? What would happen if we put a monster-sprinter like Alessandro Petacchi or Tom Boonen on one of those bikes and said "go!"?

This is always what bike shows have been about. The more attention drawn to a brand, the more orders which will come in for the most mundane of builds simply because he/she did that crazy thing with that new item.

Looks like a solution in search of a problem to me.

I remain skeptical. Sure, cars can run their belts for 100,000 miles in an environment that goes from outdoor temperature to 100 degrees celsius, etc...

But it's a new technology. I'm sure it will require more development.

However, this seems ready to be utilized right now without problems on 3-speed commuter type bicycles designed for city riding. I bet it would be a pretty attractive feature for most non-serious cyclist types.

barefoot trackstand on a bed?

http://flickr.com/photos/fastboy/2121357174/

Good way to slow your bike down and waste energy. It comes up evey few months. Getting the tension tight enough is a real pain. If you add in a geared hub to have gear choices the bike gets even slower and less efficent.

Nothing like having a specific frame built to make a bike slower and harder to get parts for, to make life difficult. It's old old old stuff.

yes...thank you.

My take on this. As a former equipment mechanic I replaced just as many broekn belts as I did chains. In my experience they are equally strong. Also belts don't wear down their pulleys as fast as a chain will wear on a cog/chainring. Belts don't need any lube.

I think belts would be great on single speed/internally geared commuter bikes for someone who doesn't want to do any/much maintenance on their bike.

Belts are less efficient than chains, and if set up improperly are much more likely to come off.

I'll stick with chains.

a belt will never do this to you . . . http://sheldonbrown.com/images/fing-.jpg


then again, neither will a chain, unless you stick your fingers in the bite.

So remember kids, lobster claws are NOT a substitute for bike chains.

More intelligent discussion in the Touring section:
http://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=388076

i want to tinker and build a belt driven cvt system for a drive train now....

I read that thread. It reminded me of my ex-colleague Kimmo who has a collection of vintage (and some not-so-vintage) motorbikes. He told me he positively hates his belt-driven bike, and how the belt lasts much less than the chains on the other bikes.

By the way; in an enclosed environment (no dirt), a chain can last pretty damn long. Like, hundreds of thousands kilometers.

I'll personally stick with the tried and true chain drive system. This seems like a gimmick

The belts we're talking about here are pretty un-stretcheable. So I guess such a belt, if it's tensioned right, might not cut your finger off, but it very well may squish it nicely. Any volunteers to try?

just what i need, rubber bands on my bike.

Why have a belt, when you can have a shaft?

http://www.dynamicbicycles.com/chainless/index.php

http://www.dynamicbicycles.com/admin/bikes/l161908.jpg

^^^Apparently, those have a terrible transmission efficiency. Hardly anything beats the good ole chain in that respect.

That said, shaft drive is probably the most dirt-resistant transmission of them all.