Pinion Gearbox Review-This is the Future of Bicycles!

[Music] how's it going it is time to talk about the pinion gear box oh yes I love this I'm going to start off by saying that this is a very biased review of the pinion gear box I absolutely love it I've had it on my priority 600 for about a year and a half now and this is a bike that I use every single day I don't have a car this bike is my car and it's been through rain and snow and mud and my favorite part about the pinion system is that there is virtually zero maintenance they say every 6,000 miles or once a year you need to get in there and change the oil and that is about it and I haven't even done that and it still works like a dream I am going to talk about specifically the 12 speed gearbox that's the only one that I have used I think there's also an 18 speed and a nine speed but the twelve speed one is pretty much all I could ever imagine needing it has a 600% gear ratio so that means from top to bottom there's a 600% gear ratio change the SRAM Eagle setup is about five hundred percent so that gives you an idea that there are a lot of gears here and between each gear there's a seventeen percent difference so each gear is definitely a unique step up or step down the granny gear is supergranny you can go up the steepest of hills on the other side you can just crank as fast as you ever imagined going down a mountain in this video I'm gonna specifically be talking about pinion gear boxes for mountain biking obviously I love it for bike commuting and bike touring for that matter I've taken a pinion gear box about a thousand miles on a bike tour and it was awesome so I thought maybe I should try a mountain bike with the pinion set up so my good friends at gates lent us these really awesome Reeb made in Colorado six fitty bikes outfitted with the pinion gear system our e b-but if you take it this way B II are you've got beer and we took these sweet made in Colorado pinion gear box equipped awesome mountain bikes on an epic seven-day adventure from Durango to Moab with the San Juan Hut systems it was so awesome we didn't need to carry a lot of gear because the huts come stocked with all the food and water and snacks that you could ever want so we got to ride pretty light which was great going into this adventure I was really curious about how the pinion system would handle the demands of mountain biking you know when you're just commuting or on a bike tour you're not shifting gears under a lot of pressure just pedaling at a pretty slow pace but with mountain biking you're going up and down and up and down and switching gears quite often I just was curious about how this system would handle those demands and you know what I found out after riding all day every day for seven straight days pinion system is amazing on a normal mountain bike you usually crunching through gears when you're going uphill and your chain is just grinding on your cassette that does not happen with pinion it is always in tune it is always accurate it is always in sync one thing that is very important to know about the pinion gearing system is that you cannot change gears while you are pedaling you simply learn that before you go into a steep hill you change your gears so that you're ready and if you really have to change gears when you're like powering through something you just lay off for a second make your change and you're good to go definitely heavier than your traditional drivetrain with a cassette and a derailleur but the weight is focused on the center of the bike which helps out with the handling and taking the weight off the rear wheel weight doesn't really affect me I don't care that much about weight I'm always packing my bikes down with gear anyway so my bikes are usually pretty heavy and the trade-off for the weight is that you have a zero maintenance drive system look at all this gunk that wants to get into the gears but I can't get into the gears because it's all enclosed another thing the pinion gear system supposedly has more drag than your traditional drivetrain although I've never really noticed it again it's kind of like my bikes always being heavy I just I'm used to pedaling hard and it feels like a normal setup to me here is one definite downside you can't just go to a store and buy a pinion gear box and put it on your bike your frame has to be specially made for pinion these bikes with the pinion system and the carbon belt drive worked like a dream for these seven days and we were doing some technical stuff and we were going through mud and we were you know doing things that would normally clog up a traditional drivetrain but it just did not affect us at all the only thing that happened is that the carbon belt drives got a little bit squeaky riding through all the dust when that happens on a carbon belt Drive you just shower it with water and you're good to go the great thing about a carbon belt drive is that you never need to oil it it's pretty much no maintenance so coupled with the pinion system you've got pretty much an indestructible drivetrain and these belt rise lasts about three times longer than a regular chain we did not bring extra belt drives that's something you can definitely do because on the off chance the one-in-a-million chance that you do snap your belt drive you cannot fix it if that breaks you're done so unless you have an extra belt drive you're walking out of wherever you are we covered over 200 miles about 25 thousand feet of elevation change so we were definitely going up and down some serious mountain passes we were doing some very technical riding we finished this adventure on the whole enchilada if you know about that trail you know that is very technical and the pinyin system always worked and that is the best part about the pinyin system you never need to worry about it and it's really nice to have that peace of mind when you're out in the middle of nowhere on some sort of a bike tour or bike adventure like the one that we were on we knew that every day we woke up we were going to get on our bikes and they were going to work the exact same way we left them the night before another interesting bonus to the pinion system that I didn't think about when I first got it is that you can crank through gears with one fell swoop you know if you're on a regular bike with the cassette the chain has to make its way up the cassette if you're going from small to large or large to small with pinion you're stopped you can go from gear one crank it down and be in gear 12 and it's just ready to go like a car and speaking of cars this pinion system is essentially made to be just like the transmission box in a car you see pinion was developed by ex Porsche transmission engineers who thought why don't we do what we do in cars for bikes the gearbox technology is pretty new and I know that they're just going to be getting better and better and better and along with that I'm guessing that the weights gonna come down a little bit and most importantly the price is gonna come down the pinion gear box is definitely a lot pricier than your traditional drivetrain but like I've said many times before it's worth it to me I love the peace of mind knowing that this bike is going to always work high-five fam a lot of you out there are probably wondering how does the gearbox work and I don't know the answer to that question it looks very complicated to me I am NOT an engineer all I know is that Germans are behind it and I trust those guys they know what they're doing so that's about it the pinion gear box is awesome it works it's smooth and when you couple it with the gates carbon belt drive you pretty much have a zero maintenance drivetrain it works on my commuter bike and now I'm a fan of it on a mountain bike and it's probably something that I'm gonna look at buying down the road if you want to see more videos highlighting the pinion gear box I will link them below I have some videos from my priority 600 commuter bike and also I made a really cool series of videos documenting our trip from Durango to Moab if you liked what you saw please like and subscribe tell all your friends to subscribe tell your mom and your uncle and your aunt and all your friends and maybe even your ex-girlfriend because I need some more women viewers on my channel to like and subscribe my channel I'm a dork good bye [Music]

Channel: Ryan Van Duzer

Views: 344,566

Keywords: bike packing with pinion gearbox, bike packing with pinion and gates, pinion gearbox long term review, is pinion gearbox worth it, pinion gearbox review, pinion and gates Carbon drive mtn biking, reeb mountain bike with pinion, reeb six fidy bike review, pinion and gates drivetrain review, pinion gearbox on a mtn bike, mtb pinion gearbox, Is pinion good for mtn biking, bicycle touring with gates carbon drive, bike touring with pinion, best mtb drive train, belt drive mtb bike

Id: 9n_2UMmpZ4A

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 17 2019