The Gear-Driven Chainless Bicycle! Is it worth it?

Known for his crazy projects like this chainless bicycle, the Q Youtube channel presents a great video for us. He came up with the idea of building a chainless bicycle that could still be ridden without the need for additional equipment or attachments.

The cycling force of a bicycle is often transferred to the bike’s back wheel through a chain. To know more about how this chainless bicycle works and is it better than the chained version, please continue reading.

Chainless Bicycle Building Process

Source: Youtube / The Q

Chainless bicycles have been around for a while, but this is the first one that uses a shaft-driven mechanism. A drive shaft is used instead of a chain to deliver power from the pedals to the wheel on these bikes. In other words, instead of a chainring, it features a big bevel gear.

Removing the chainring
Source: Youtube / The Q

This then connects to a bevel gear on the drive shaft, allowing the axis to be rotated by 90 degrees.

Source: Youtube / The Q

Using some old bevel gears from his garage, and after cleaning them, the project was ready to start!

Source: Youtube / The Q

Now that we know how he built his chainless bicycle, let’s take a look at some of the main differences between gear and chain-driven mechanisms.

Difference Between Gear Drive and Chain Drive

Gears and chains are both used to serve the same purpose it is to transmit power. However, they have many points that they are different at:

Gear Drive

Chain Drive

The teeth of mated gears are successively engaged and disengaged to transmit power and motion in a gear drive, which is an engagement-type mechanical drive.

Power and motion are transmitted sequentially between the chain and the sprocket by means of chain engagement and disengagement.

It is not a single flexible drive. As a result, the driver unit cannot be protected from the vibrations caused by the driven unit.

Flexible elements, such as chain, make this a flexible drive. As a result, the driver will be protected from vibration.

Gear drive takes up more space for the same center distance. The weight of the driving unit is also significant.

Because of its small size, the chain drive saves a lot of space. The drive unit is small and lightweight.

Full lubrication is required for gear drives. Gears in heavy-duty applications need to be partially submerged in lubricating oil for optimal performance and durability.

Chain drives also needs lubrication; however, it does not require full lubrication.

Gear drives are quite in operation.

Chain drives are noisy in operation.

What do you think of this project? Would you prefer this chainless bike over chain-driven bikes? And which bike do you think is more reliable? Take a look at the video below to see this project in detail and step by step (skip to 4:20 to see the bike in action!).

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