Now that the Nivex derailleurs have been in production for a while, Rene Herse is taking analog shifting to the next level with the Floating Chain. This system is lighter, has less resistance and costs far less than all derailleur systems available today.Jan Heine, head of R&D at Rene Herse Cycles, explained: “One-by drivetrains have simplified bicycle gearing, but it’s time to go a step further. Most cyclists need only three gears: one for uphills, one for flat roads, and one for downhills. The steps between these gears tend to be relatively large. Large steps between three gears are easiest to accommodate on the front, with a triple crank. So we’ve effectively turned the one-by around and put all the gears on the front.”
The Floating Chain system uses a triple crank and just a single-speed freewheel on the rear. As an added benefit, front derailleurs are lighter, more reliable, and less prone to damage when the bike falls over.
In the interest of keeping the system simple and to reduce mechanical resistance to a minimum, there is no chain tensioner. The chain length is selected for the big chainring, and it’s allowed to float freely when it runs on one of the smaller chainrings. There is no need to keep the lower chain run tensioned, as long as you don’t backpedal for more than half a revolution of the cranks.
@tk@mastobikes@biketooter Most cyclists need only 3 gears if they live around flat terrain with some rolling hills.
When you live in foot hills, river valley's, and other more sharp topogrpahy you need more like 7-10 gears and some of them are rather close. So one's milage may vary on the utility of this system.
Plus rear derailleurs are only slightly more fragile than front.
@InkySchwartz@tk@mastobikes@biketooter Experimenting with even stupid-looking things can teach us something. But most people are not interested in experimenting.
@dcz@tk@mastobikes@biketooter
Eh, most people experiment to some degree by just trying new things. The issue is when you try something new, then claim it fixes X, and then slap specious arguments on it. It's very much like selling snake oil, or a tech bro trying to VC in their project.
Also as anothe person pointed this may all be an April Fools joke.
@InkySchwartz@mastobikes@biketooter I disagree. Was just in Amsterdam (last month). Ride around some on a hotel 3-speed. Had Goldilocks "this gear is too high, this gear is too low" annoyance. Riding a bike should not be annoying. 5 in the same range would have done, though.
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