How's it going? It is time to talk about the opinion gearbox. Whoa, yes, I love this. I'm going to start off by saying that this is a very biased review of the opinion gearbox. I absolutely love it. I've had it on my priority 600 for about a year and a half now and this is a bike that I use every single day. I don't have a car. This bike is my car and it's been through rain and snow and mud and my favorite part about the opinion system is that there is virtually zero maintenance. They say every 6,000 miles or once a year you need to get in there and change the oil and that is about if and I haven't even done that and it still works like a dream. I am going to talk about specifically the 12 speed gearbox. That's the only one that I have used. I think there's also an 18 speed and a 9 speed but the 12 speed one is pretty much all I could ever imagine needing. It has a 600 percent gear ratio. So that means from top to bottom there's a 600 percent gear ratio change. The shran Eagle setup is about 500 percent so that gives you an idea that there are a lot of gears here and between each gear there's a 17 percent difference. So each gear is definitely a unique step up or step down. The granny gear is super granny. You can go up the steepest of hills. On the other side you can just crank as fast as you ever imagined going down a mountain. In this video I'm going to specifically be talking about pinion gear boxes for mountain biking. Obviously I love it for bike commuting and bike touring for that matter. I've taken a pinion gear box about a thousand miles on a bike tour and it was awesome so I thought maybe I should try a mountain bike with the pinion setup. So my good friends at Gates lent us these really awesome rebe made in Colorado 6 Fitty bikes outfitted with the pinion gear system. But if you take it this way, B-E-E-R, you've got beer. And we took these sweet made in Colorado pinion gear box equipped awesome mountain bikes on an epic seven day adventure from Durengo to Moab with the Sam Juan Hut systems. It was so awesome. We didn't need to carry a lot of gear because the huts come stocked with all the food and water and snacks that you could ever want. So we got to ride pretty light which was great. Going into this adventure I was really curious about how the pinion system would handle the demands of mountain biking. You know when you're just commuting or on a bike tour you're not shifting gears under a lot of pressure. You're just peddling at a pretty slow pace. But with mountain biking you're going up and down and up and down and switching gears quite often. I just was curious about how this system would handle those demands. And you know what I found out after riding all day, every day for seven straight days, pinion system is amazing. On a normal mountain bike you're usually crunching through gears when you're going uphill and your chain is just grinding on your cassette that does not happen with pinion. It is always in tune, it is always accurate, it is always in sync. One thing that is very important to know about the pinion gearing system is that you cannot change gears while you are peddling. You simply learn that before you go into a steep hill you change your gears so that you're ready. And if you really have to change gears when you're like powering through something you just lay off for a second, make your change and you're good to go. It's definitely heavier than your traditional drivetrain with a cassette and a derailleur. But the weight is focused on the center of the bike which helps out with handling and taking the weight off the rear wheel. Weight doesn't really affect me. I don't care that much about weight. I'm always packing my bikes down with gear anyway. So my bikes are usually pretty heavy. And the trade-off for the weight is that you have a zero maintenance drive system. Look at all this gunk that wants to get into the gears but it can't get into the gears because it's all enclosed. Another thing, the pinion gear system supposedly has more drag than your traditional drivetrain. Although I've never really noticed it. Again, it's kind of like my bikes always being heavy. I just I'm used to peddling hard and it feels like a normal setup to me. Here is one definite downside. You can't just go to a store and buy opinion gearbox and put it on your bike. Your frame has to be specially made for opinion. These bikes with the pinion system and the carbon belt drive worked like a dream for these seven days. And we were doing some technical stuff and we were going through mud and we were you know doing things that would normally clog up a traditional drivetrain but it just did not affect us at all. The only thing that happened is that the carbon belt drives got a little bit squeaky riding through all the dust. And when that happens on a carbon belt drive you just shower with water and you're good to go. The great thing about a carbon belt drive is that you never need to oil it. It's pretty much no maintenance. So coupled with the pinion system you've got pretty much an indestructible drivetrain and these belt drives last about three times longer than a regular chain. We did not bring extra belt drives. That's something you can definitely do because on the off chance the one and a million chance that you do snap your belt drive you cannot fix it. If that breaks you're done. So unless you have an extra belt drive you're walking out of wherever you are. We covered over 200 miles about 25,000 feet of elevation change so we were definitely going up and down some serious mountain passes. We were doing some very technical riding. We finished this adventure on the whole enchilada. If you know about that trail you know that it is very technical and the pinion system always worked and that is the best part about the pinion system. You never need to worry about it and it's really nice to have that peace of mind when you're out in the middle of nowhere on some sort of a bike tour or bike adventure like the one that we were on. We knew that every day we woke up. We were going to get on our bikes and they were going to work the exact same way we left them the night before. Another interesting bonus to the pinion system that I didn't think about when I first got it is that you can crank through gears with one fell swoop. You know if you're on a regular bike with a cassette the chain has to make its way up the cassette if you're going from small to larger large to small. With pinion you're stopped. You can go from gear one crank it down and be in gear 12 and it's just ready to go like a car. And speaking of cars this pinion system is essentially made to be just like the transmission box in a car. You see pinion was developed by X Porsche transmission engineers who thought why don't we do what we do in cars for bikes. The gearbox technology is pretty new and I know that they're just going to be getting better and better and better and along with that I'm guessing the weight's going to come down a little bit and most importantly the price is going to come down. The pinion gearbox is definitely a lot pricier than your traditional drive train. But like I've said many times before it's worth it to me. I love the peace of mind knowing that this bike is going to always work. A lot of you out there are probably wondering how does the gearbox work and I don't know the answer to that question. It looks very complicated to me. I am not an engineer. All I know is that Germans are behind it and I trust those guys. They know what they're doing. So that's about it. The pinion gear box is awesome. It works. It's smooth and when you couple it with a Gates Carbon belt drive you pretty much have a zero maintenance drive train. It works on my commuter bike and now I'm a fan of it on a mountain bike and it's probably something that I'm going to look at buying down the road. If you want to see more videos highlighting the pinion gear box I will link them below. I have some videos from my priority 600 commuter bike and also I made a really cool series of videos documenting our trip from Durango to Moab. If you like what you saw please like and subscribe. Tell all your friends to subscribe. Tell your mom and your uncle and your aunt and all your friends and maybe even your ex-girlfriend because I need some more women viewers on my channel to like and subscribe my channel. I'm a dork. Goodbye.