Pinion P1.18 Gearbox: First Ride [Pink Bike]

How do you know if you’ve seen a glimpse of the future? Sci-fi films of the 1960s showed us a world where we’d all have robot butlers and flying cars, but we’re now living in that future and things haven’t changed so much. Sure skirts are a bit longer, cars uglier and we have iPads, yet if someone had skipped those fifty years in between, they’d still be able to recognise the world around them. If the past is any guide, the world of tomorrow will look a lot like today. So if we wonder about the future of mountain bikes, most things will stay constant: two wheels, cranks in the middle and a handlebar at the front. How and where we ride bikes won’t be that different either. Change the fundamentals and you no longer have a mountain bike. Present technology, however, ensures that there is still much room for future improvements - and the fact that we still rely on derailleur shifting is glaring evidence.

Pinion's Gearbox - Ready for the Future

For those who spend time thinking about this future, gearing has been a constant theme. Derailleur mechs have a number of obvious flaws, like how easily they can be destroyed by a stray rock, the fact they put weight on an awkward part of the bike and that are they open to the elements. Yet nobody has managed to find a suitable alternative yet, well until now - maybe. We have been monitoring the development of a German-made 18-speed sequential-shift gearbox, designed specifically for mountain bikes. The pinion gearbox is now nearing production and its future looks very bright. 


[Keep reading at Pink Bike]