- So apparently, the big drivetrain companies,
otherwise known as big derailleur,
have refused to put money into gearbox bicycles
because they'd solve all of our problems
and make our bikes maintenance free.
I know this to be the case
because random internet commenters say so,
but this assumption doesn't seem to hold water,
as gearboxes do exist,
good ones.
This one is made by Pinion.
It has as much range or more
as any conventional mountain bike drivetrain.
It is as reliable as your wildest expectations.
It's extremely durable,
it shifts instantly,
and just in the USA,
there are 10 to 12,000 happy customers
riding around on these things.
And so it's pretty strange how rare it is
to see one of these out in the wild.
Why is that?
Big derailleur.
(light music)
So the mountain bikes most of us are used to have a,
we'll call it a conventional drivetrain
with a chain and a derailleur and a cassette.
When you pedal and shift gears,
it moves that chain along the cassette,
thus changing your gear,
so you want to go up a hill, you go in a really low gear,
if you want to get up a lot of speed,
you go into a really high gear.
So yes, a gearbox like this one accomplishes
essentially the same thing as a derailleur,
but it does it in a different way.
This is enclosed,
and so it doesn't really get dirty.
In fact, all you have to do is change the oil once a year.
That's why people like these.
They're extremely reliable and low maintenance.
Now, this Pinion gearbox is installed on a Zerode Taniwha.
You can't install it on any bike.
It has to be compatible with the six-bolt interface.
This gearbox can be configured with 9 or 12 speeds,
and according to Pinion,
this actually has more range than Eagle.
But that's not the only advantage of a gearbox.
First of all, this style of gearbox uses a belt drive
and belt drives have advantages of their own.
This is not lubricated.
It doesn't have oil on it,
and so there's no dirt sticking to it.
It stays very clean,
and they last thousands and thousands of miles,
usually much longer than a chain.
I mean, pretty much all you have to do
to maintain a belt drive
is inspect it every once in a while and hose it off.
(music)
The lowest gear on this is low,
so low that oftentimes I find myself not in it.
And the actual user experience on the trail is pretty good.
It does have a grip shift,
which I'm not crazy about,
but the gear changes are all but instantaneous.
You can just dump a bunch of gears with this thing
and it just goes.
There's no in-between,
there's no getting your chain wrapped up in your cassette,
it just shifts gears really fast.
(drivetrain creaking)
But it does take a little bit of getting used to.
If you've ever driven a stick shift car,
you know that in order to shift gears,
you have to push down the clutch.
Unless you rev match,
if you get the revs just right,
it kind of just falls into the next gear
and you don't have to push down the clutch at all.
The Pinion gearbox sort of works the same way
except it has no clutch,
and so you have to kind of finesse it a little bit
kind of like you would with a derailleur,
but like I said, the shifts are instantaneous.
So it's durable, it's reliable,
it's extremely low maintenance,
the shifts are instantaneous,
it has all the advantages of a belt drive,
and you can geek out over that whole rev matching thing.
So what's the catch?
Why is it so rare to see one of these out in the wild?
Well, as it turns out,
there are some significant trade-offs.
So first of all, a few things we already mentioned,
it's not compatible with every bike.
It has to have a six-bolt interface,
and so your choice of bikes is kind of limited
if you want a gearbox.
Also, like I mentioned,
this particular one uses a grip shift.
Not everybody likes grip shift.
You can see there's actually two cables
coming out of the shifter to shift up and down,
and so you can't just throw any old mountain bike shifter
on this thing.
It's also kind of hefty.
It's hard to compare apples to apples here
because we're only talking about gearbox compatible bikes
but figure this is gonna add a pound or two
to your experience.
It is worth noting, though,
the weight is down low in the center.
But the biggest issue that people have with gearbox bicycles
is actually not the weight,
it's the efficiency.
When you pedal a bike with a conventional drivetrain,
part of your output goes to propelling the bike forwards.
That's what you want but not all of it does,
some of it gets eaten up by friction.
It turns out this is not very much friction.
Conventional drivetrains are very efficient
and gearboxes are less so.
(bike whirring)
You hear that whirring sound?
It sounds a little bit like an e-bike,
actually feels a little bit like an e-bike too
minus the sensation of being propelled forwards.
That's the planetary gear
spinning around inside the gearbox,
and you can feel it.
It does have a little bit of drag.
You can especially feel this
if you're pedaling it on the work bench,
but it varies.
If you're in the lowest gear just grinding up a fire road,
you don't really feel it at all.
It's about the same as a conventional drivetrain.
But as you move into smaller and smaller gears,
you notice it a lot more
and it's starts to become pretty significant.
This is probably not gonna be your first choice
for cross-country racing.
But not only is a gearbox gonna cost you in efficiency,
it's also gonna cost you $1,600.
That puts it right up there
with the highest end mountain bike drivetrains we have.
And so who is this for?
Well nerds,
but also people who don't maintain their bikes.
Not that they can't maintain their bikes
for lack of knowledge,
they're just way out in the back country
and drivetrain failure isn't even an option.
That's very likely another reason
why you don't see these out in the wild very often,
the people who own these are quite elusive.
They're out there in the back country
having type 2 fun very far away from where you're riding.
Anybody who's willing to make all those trade-offs
and spend $1,600 on this thing is using it.
This also works well for enduro racing,
especially if you have a bunch of messy back-to-back stages.
You can be damn sure this thing's gonna be working
and it plays really nice with rear suspension.
I've mentioned in other videos
how high engagement hubs
can actually impact your rear suspension,
no such problem on this.
It's got tons of slop,
not the best for technical climbing,
but for going downhill, it feels pretty sweet.
This also works well on a commuter bike.
After all, if your drivetrain doesn't work,
you can't get to work.
Not to mention, commuter bikes are subject
to all sorts of abuse from bike racks to stairwells,
and this behaves pretty well in those situations
as long as you don't get it stolen.
Pinion is a relatively small company,
and so the thinking is if big derailleur,
with all of their R&D dollars,
started studying gearboxes,
they would solve all of the downsides
and they would replace derailleurs overnight.
But actually, we have over a century of R&D into gearboxes.
They're in your car, motorcycles,
ATVs, UTVs, you name it.
They're even in RC cars,
and in all of these categories,
they're trying to make them as light and efficient
as possible.
(upbeat music)
And so if you want to ditch your derailleur
and use a gearbox,
here it is.
It's good.
It works great.
As long as you're not racing XC
or you're some kind of a weight weenie,
it's actually a really good drivetrain.
You could call it a transmission.
(light cheerful music)
I had a ton of fun testing the Zerode Taniwha.
It descends like a beast
and it doesn't climb that bad either.
Using the gearbox was a really unique experience.
I might want to do it again, honestly,
and I learned a lot.
This is the first experience I've had
with a gearbox drivetrain.
I hope you learned something today too.
And if you didn't learn anything,
I hope you at least found this video entertaining.
Thanks for riding with me today,
and I'll see you next time.
(bike whirring) (wheel crunching)
(drivetrain creaking)
Okay, see if you can hear this.
I'm gonna go up a couple of gears.
(bike whirring)