Belt Drive? Worth doing?

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biking_fox

Legendary Member
Location
Manchester
I'm looking at getting a new commuting all-round, all-weather bike. One of the options is belt drive. In principle this means no dirty chain, no cleaning?, no regular replacements, no adjustments.
In practice? - has anyone got one? How do they ride? How much maintenance to they really need? How long do they last before you do need to replace something?

It will be on a Rohloff hub which I'm already riding, and a belt ready specific frame if I go down that route.
 

Dogtrousers

Lefty tighty. Get it righty.
No practical experience but if I were in your position - already have a suitable frame and hub - I'd. Be itching to give it a go out of curiosity.

Edit: On re-reading maybe you don't already have the frame.
 
Last edited:
Location
Loch side.
I've been on a belt drive for five years now and will never go back to chain drive. That said, my competitive days are over, so I'm a commuter, tourer and weekend run cyclist now.

I've done more than 10k on the same belt and it still looks, sounds and works good.

Within the parameters for which it is designed, I cannot think of a single drawback. It requires zero maintenance, I've not had a single chain tattoo in five years and, all the talking about finding the optimum tension is all nonsense. Tighter, looser, it just doesn't care.

We now have three belt drives in the fleet.
 
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