W/NW: Bicycles

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Rolleicord, Triotar.
 
My son changing the front forks on his bicycle. This one has a normal chain drive, not like the shaft-drive one above. I think it's a good idea, particularly since I ride a BMW shaft-driven motorbike, but I does look like something critical has been left off the chainless bicycle!
John Mc
Leica M6, Zeiss Sonnar 50, TMax100 film
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mcfingon said:
My son changing the front forks on his bicycle. This one has a normal chain drive, not like the shaft-drive one above. I think it's a good idea, particularly since I ride a BMW shaft-driven motorbike, but I does look like something critical has been left off the chainless bicycle!
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What's been left off, that greasy chain rubbing and sticking against your pants or those thick noisy derailleur gears where half of the gears are just duplicates anyway you mean? ;)

Most people in the internet who are saying this have never seen let alone ridden a well designed shaft drive bike. The same is true for all the shaft-drive bashing in the motorcycle community (the black sheep in a herd of whites always gets all the blame as we know).

Just like on motorcycles no doubt the shaft drive isn't meant for a fast sports bike, but for a commuter bike there's nothing better IMHO. It's an elegant fully enclosed maintenance-free design made to last, very underrated in today's capitalistic consumption world where people just throw away things when they wear out - some shaft drive bikes from the year 1890s (!) still work today in their original form vs the all the chain bikes I've had. The shaft-driven bike rides in great smoothness and in utter silence - just the barely audible tyre noise on faster speeds (no free drive ticking, clacking, clutters or rigged mechanical noises like on your chain drive) - you pedal and ride in sheer silence. It's probably the perfect assassin's bike so no wonder the military special units had them during the wars and some still do. 8 planetary (hub-) gears that actually work in normal progression and intuitive ratios is much better than my annoying 21/27/30 mostly duplicate gears I've had on my derailleur bikes. They're meant for riding and not for showing off (unless you're a mechanics aficionado that notices it's a fundamentally different design).


Path by tsiklonaut, on Flickr

They are ultra-rare though, I've had two shaft drive bicycles. Both were and still are the only modern copies in my whole country. There are around 10 in my country, most from the late 1880s and early 1900s highly valued museum bikes (single geared and no freerun), but very few modern ones I prefer (gears and proper freerun). In 5+ years I've been riding around I think only 3 people have noticed it's a shaft drive (a good test for people's observation maybe? ;))
 
That's a good point about consumer items Margus. Maybe in the current situation people will want consumer items to last longer and require less parts. I'll look forward to more shaft-drive bicycles being available. Here's me and my normal chained ebike. John Mc
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