Pinion P1.12 - Long term review for XC riding

hello everybody flagging slur here today I'm going to review the Reid 650 heart tale spectral opinion P 112 gearbox I wanted to make this review for a while because back when I was planning the build for this bike about a year and a half ago I found very little medium to long term feedback on the pinion gear boxes especially when used for good old XC writing I bought the pinion P 112 as a compromise between the number of gears percent gap between gears and weight of the system my expectation going into this purchase was to have a bike that required very little maintenance even when taking a beating and that would perform well on long steep climbs long steep descents and could handle touring and bike packing as well I've written this gearbox almost exclusively on single track in North Cheyenne Canyon area in Colorado's Front Range and after a year of use I have to say I'm very pleased with the pinion system once it is set up maintenance is limited to oil changes once a year and clean the bike if you get it dirty that is if you really want to keep it clean the P 1.12 has a truly enormous 600% gear range with even 17% steps between gears the 17% has been fine even though it is pretty big on paper if you want smaller steps that p1 18 has 11 and a half percent steps which is similar to conventional derailleur system especially when you're looking at the 1 by 11 and 1 by 12 drive trains the only shift are available for the gearbox right now is pinions grip shifter yes a trigger shifter would be awesome but it doesn't exist as of yet so the gripper will have to do it works well for all the writing I do its ability to shift through every gear and under a second is very handy when riding a trail this switches a vertical direction very sharply especially when it's really techy because you don't have to pedal to shift but you should technically do this with all shifting systems and it's pretty easy to get used to the maintenance is incredibly easy on the pinion once the shifter cables are run adjustments can be made on the fly with barrel adjusters on the shifter the oil needs to be changed once a year but that's far easier than changing the shift cables in my experience I've made a simple how-to video for changing shift cables and one for changing oil if you are a do-it-yourselfer I'm running the gates belt drive because it requires almost no maintenance it does need to be lubed with water in dry and dusty riding conditions as are found here in Colorado if that's worse than keeping a chain lube then just get a chain I would say the drawback to the pinions bomb-proof design is its weight I estimated that it is about two pounds heavier than a nice SRAM or Shimano mountain bike drivetrain depending on which option you go with I'm not racing and it meets my needs so I don't worry about that extra weight a common point I hear a lot is that the weight is centered anyhow so the bike handles better through corners I think it makes a bigger difference for full suspension setups but I'm on a hardtail so I'll let others address that and there are videos out there on this topic a couple things I would love to see on pinion are one carbon crank arms because they look awesome they keep the weight down and they allow pinion to make more money off of people like me to a Power Meter option like stages three a rear fixed hub with boost spacing although this may not matter as I believe a rear freewheel may be required even though the pinion does have ratcheting Pauls for and finally more carbon frame options to go with the pinion gear box so onto the rest of the bike I originally built the bike with a Sun - a radon 140 millimeter travel fork because it was free from a friend at the shop where I used to work I would look down to the fork when I was cornering or riding through a rocky little train section and I could see the fork flexing and bending so I decided to upgrade to a nicer fork I went with the pike 140 millimeter travel fork and boy is it stiffer it corners smoothly and maintains a line without all the wobbling and flexing the the radon had and it handles rocky terrain and pretty much everything better four wheels I'm running DT Swift's 350 hubs laced to light bicycle carbon rims I went with carbon because it rides and handles so much better than alloy in my experience the wheels I built are super smooth and stiff they corner well and they look awesome I've run a couple sets of light bicycle rims and would highly recommend them my dropper seat post is in the grove I run wireless dropper and it's pretty awesome I don't have hydro cable routing options on the steel frame so the no cables feature is pretty great for me it is slightly slower than pure hydraulic systems but that doesn't matter for me again I'm not racing so far the battery life has been stellar I've had no problems with it or with the ant+ Wireless a couple extra things that I have on my bike are my specialized bag that's able to fit my big old samsung galaxy note 5 plus a spare tube plus a little bit of food in there with this I don't have to wear a backpack when I'm just going out for a shorter ride say 10 miles something like that I also like to carry a tire pump and a shock pump on me for emergency situations and they have actually paid off on a couple of rides to have them with me I actually had to design and 3d print a mount for the shock pump and it's very nice to have with me at all times so how does this bike ride the trail geometry of this bike allows it to handle nastier train than I'm really capable of taking it on basically it has a slack head tube angle and a tall stack with the 140 millimeter fork for handling downhill terrain pretty well however because it is a hard tail it can still climb more efficiently than a full suspension rig it corners like a beast which I only started noticing when I switched the forks I think keeping the drivetrain mass in the crank area instead of by the rear wheel certainly helps with the handling so after year riding this baby I have to say I am a hundred percent impressed with the pinion technology and with the Reeb steel frame I would buy the same bike if I had to I have ridden carbon frames for mountain bikes and past they are stiffer they are lighter but I don't think it makes a huge difference if you're not trying to squeeze every bit of performance out of it and that's why I also think that more carbon frame options need to be made to match with the pinion drivetrain and you're really gonna see some cool bikes going forward I hope the technology catches on and more options become available possibly from other companies finding a standard mount system may be the one that pinion already has I think once this happens the price is gonna drop across the board and gearboxes are gonna be more affordable to the masses so thanks for listening to me brag about my bike because that's pretty much the reason I made this if you liked this video or any of the other ones I've made please subscribe and hit the like button have a great day and go buy yourself opinion if you have any comments or questions anything you like or dislike if you agree or disagree go ahead and leave me a comment in the section below [Music]

Channel: Ethan Blagg

Views: 84,592

Rating: 4.9041095 out of 5

Keywords: pinion, p1.12, gearbox, p1.9, p1.18, c1.9, c1.12, c1.18, c-series, p-series, p series, c series, transmission, bike, mtb, mountain, mountain bike, gear box, gear, gates, belt drive, 27.5, 27.5+, 29, 29er, plus, fat bike, reeb, specialized, eurobike, interbike, outerbike, canyon, touring, xc, cross country, rockshox, suntour, raidon, reba, sid, pike, dtswiss, dt swiss, 350s, 240s, light-bicycle, pinion.eu, pinion.com, magura, vyron, elect, remote, dropper, seat post, post, fizik, shimano, xtr, trail, singletrack, pikes, peak, pikes peak

Id: T3zsdth1ASg

Length: 7min 36sec (456 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2017