So I've been sent over here by three
people - Wade Wallace from Cycling Tips My wife Veronica back home who's seen this online, and DC Rainmaker has sent me a message today saying "Shane come and
check this out". So when someone like Ray says come and check it out I've got to
come and check it out. What we've got here is a prototype drivetrain. I've never seen anything like this. We have roller bearings in here we have all I can think of is a carrot grater up the back here that's been heavily engineered to provide the drive train of the bike. Now on bikes and with all the power meter testing that we do, you know which gear you're in can affect the efficiency of your drive train up to 2.5%, maybe 5% with a dirty chain or cross chaining This gets rid of all of that. So I've been over here chatting to the guys about this technology and the innovation they've brought to the
bike and it's a very very interesting tech. Now it's not silent. I thought it
would be silence and this is might be the holy grail of matching this with the Kickr CORE or the Kickr18 but it's not silent, can hear a bit of so I can hear a bit of........ *ticking noise* There's a bit of noise there but you've got
everything you'd expect. Freewheeling... And it's actually quite smooth there's no real chunkiness at all through there. The
gear changing in the near future will be provided by moving this in and out but
this is only a prototype at the moment so we don't quite have that. I did
overhear the guys talking how long it takes to actually machine that out of
one piece of Aluminium here it's about 8 hours or so to machine this
this. This is a little showpiece in itself and good for salads as well for the family.
So I guess in coming up with that idea of making a super efficient drivetrain
is the engineering problems they'll have with this now. One of the things I was
talking to Jason about here from CeramicSpeed was a typical chain just simply
pulls on the the chain rings this way or the cassette this way. Now what this will
want to do given the design it's going to want to jump outwards. So they're
going to have to reinforce the bike entirely. So when you come up with one
single little idea the problem solving is going to be absolutely massive. And
another thing I have to point out as well is the surface of
contact area in here now typically on a chain you have a chain wrapped around
the entire cog set you have a lot of surface area of that chain pulling
through. On here I think we could pretty much get this to jump out of gear with
about probably just a few hundred watts sprit with really high torque. So there's an
engineering issue in itself but for something like that on an e-bike maybe a touring bike. I'm not quite sure this is ready for racing just yet. There's a lot of issues for for them to solve. I think for innovation this has to be one of the
most interesting things I've seen here. They've even had to redesign the entire
bottom bracket down here. If the camera can get in there which is probably not
gonna happen but they've got a full reinforced bottom bracket right there. I'd love to get
one of these and take it fully apart but it also love to see these guys in maybe six to twelve months to see what they can take this. Very, very cool
tech. So getting this down to a 99% efficiency, or up to 99%
efficiency this has applications far beyond just the
outdoor bike. I'm thinking indoor bikes and thinking e-bikes and where they
could place motors. Really, really cool stuff. I thought I'd I'd cover this
after being referred over here by three independent people that I trust. Super-cool tech very very unique and I
love to see someone bunking the system I guess trying something different the
drivetrain efficiency. The next question I guess is how would we put this on our
indoor trainers? It's a problem for these guys to solve. I'm keen to see what they
get up to. Okay we'll leave it there for today. If you like what you're seeing here, hit subscribe below or hit that like button. Or just leave us a
comment. What do you think about this this new design of no chain? Alright
thanks for watching we'll see you soon.