We bumped into current round-the-world record holder James Bowthorpe at the Cycle Show, and he'd brought his bike along for everyone to have a gander. In case you weren't aware it's a pretty special machine: a Santos Travelmaster 2.8 sporting a Gates Carbon belt drive and a Rohloff Speedhub. Riding the Santos, James knocked three weeks off Briton Mark Beaumont's time.
It's one thing to set off on an expedition like this on a standard machine, quite another to attempt it on a platform that's unproven in distance cycling. However, the belt performed pretty flawlessly throughout the trip, and one of the upshots of James' trip – backed up by plenty of hard work by MD Robbert Rutgrink at Santos HQ – is that Rohloff have now recognised Santos as an official supplier of Gates-driven Speedhub bikes. There were others on display at the show but using the belt without Rohloff's approval will invalidate the warranty on your hub should it go wrong. Not that they ever seem to.
So what does a round-the-world record bike look like? Well, a bit dusty and with some odd-looking appendages, but the Travelmaster has seen off its 18,000 miles without major incident. The belt only needed to be changed once during the whole trip, in Perth, and James was really happy with the performance of the drivetrain. The 14-speed Rohloff hub gives a gearing range equivalent to a triple chainset – over 500% – and it doesn't require any lubrication. Getting the belt properly aligned (it's much more critical than with a chain) and tensioned (it requires much more tension to work efficiently) are the main issues, but given that we're seeing plenty of the belts coming through onto production machines now it seems that many manufacturers, Santos included, think the benefits for certain applications outweigh the problems.
James ran a Schmidt dynamo hub into a home-made transformer mounted onto the bars. The transformer converts the AC power from the hub into DC to run the lights and charge electrical equipment including an iPod for those long days in the saddle. If it looks a bit Heath-Robinson then, well, it is. But it lasted the trip, which is more than can be said of James' right hand grip, which had to cope with 18,000 miles of twist shifting and as a result looks a little the worse for wear!
Other kit on the bike includes: Schwalbe Marathon XR tyes (which lasted 12,000 miles), a Brooks saddle, Magura Hydraulic rim brakes and a home-made rear rack platform that doubled as an iPod mount.
I think you'll find that you'll only go to jail if rich people are losing money from it.
He's not there to fill air-time (that's Kirby and the other one), he's there to use his expertise to give good insight into the racing. And he's...
Since when was 'split public opinion' any concern of the police? Unless it is the public's opinion of the police themselves.
Maybe a bit of PPE?
Thanks for the review. I like that Orbea have included aero extras and wish more manufacturers would stick two fingers up at the UCI - at least in...
Excellent - I think I'll replace my emergency tube that is a real squeeze to get into the little Topeak bottle cage bag thingy....
I enjoyed this guy I captured with his hound on New Oxford Street a few years ago.
I know this is a bit late but one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the extra wear and possible damage to the cycle lane surface due to being...
*bursts back into the room hours after the conversation has moved on*...
Damn, that sucks. I generally feel pretty relaxed with my bike on Avanti trains because the compartment is locked and I don't have to worry about...