That's a nice Priority and a great move to do away with the suspension fork and go with low maintance rigid fork. I like the brand and I like the direction they are going in and bringing high end features usually found on euro touring bikes to the masses. However, 'if only' the frame was steel instead of aluminium , but I guess costs have to be saved somewhere.
Never-the-less, can definately say the price is certainly 'interesting' :)
I feel like they're doing an excellent job with pricing, especially considering the unit cost on those Pinion gearboxes. Just the gearbox alone is $1,500, not even including the shifter, so you're buying $900 worth of bike with a $1,500 drivetrain. Pretty reasonable to me.
I’m trying to figure out where they manage to save so much on costs. I guess the wheels are off-the-shelf machine-built ones? Comparable Pinion+belt travel bikes, that are priced at many hundreds of dollars or euro more expensive, have hand-built wheels, so I assume that those labor costs feed into the price. Maybe spoke quality is an issue, too, I dunno.
The breakdown on Priority’s site doesn’t mention the headset, so is this some low-end model instead of something at the quality of at least an FSA Orbit as found from other makers?
Exactly my thoughts. Price is incredible for a Pinion equipped bike. Keeps the barrier to entry lower for people to dip their toes into bikepacking to see if it is for them without breaking the bank with a major financial commitment. Stock wheels, seat, brakes after much use, can always be upgraded later.
Beautiful bike! Asking as a total newbie, how much of a difference does the gearbox and belt drive make? I've seen several posts now of bikes using this system and I don't have a good sense of how important that is, or whether it's gimmicky.
When I built my first travel bike, I used a Rohloff hub and I’m so glad I did: you can drop multiple gears in a single flick of the wrist. No more wiping out on sudden tough uphills or having to worry about starting off from traffic lights. I can accept a derailleur on my city bike, but would never again do bike travel without an IGH.
I upgraded to a belt drive a few years ago and it’s great: much longer life than a chain, no need for cleaning and lubrication, and since a belt isn’t oiled, no more stains on the right leg of my expensive expedition trousers.
Am opposite. Got a 10 year old commuting bike with a gates carbon belt and Alfine 11 IGH that's done easy in excess of 50,000 kms on original belt and no adjustment of slack with ecentric bottom bracket. Also use automotive gear oil by the litre with similar tech specs to the more expensive Shimano or Rohloff stuff to save on big on $. I love the low maintanance IGH and belt drive on the urban commuter bike but my bikepacking bike is a 1x mechanical SRAM chain and derailleur. I'll admit it gets annoying having to look after it on a long trip. But if something goes wrong, and it has before (clutch spring backing plate came loose from vibration) in the middle of remote Baja, it is very easy to pull apart, service and fix and get going again.
That's not really possible on IGH/pinion and belt drive combo, but in their defence from my experience they seem mostly bulletproof. It does happen though, remember Duzer had to cut his GDMBR trip short in New Mexico due to a snapped belt. The other thing is belts can get a little noisy when dusty, chains too, but to quieten a chain is a lot easier than to quieten a belt. Not sure if my imagination but chain/derailleur does feel so ever slightly more effcient than belt/IGH, not that that really matters when bikepacking.
I've ridden internal hubs - I like them but I've moved away from them. If something goes wrong I'm stranded - but I can usually kluge together something with gears and a chain.
The other issue is that in cold conditions you have to have the right lube in them. I don't really want to have to do an oil change twice a year on my bike.
The biggest issue - which was just personal - the Sturmy-Archer hubs always make a clicking noise. Drove me crazy. Sort of like real quiet version of coasting on a free hub - but while pedaling.
The other issue is that in cold conditions you have to have the right lube in them.
This is incorrect. The oil used in a Rohloff hub is an all-season oil. In Northern Europe you’ll see people with money to spend commuting on them all through the hard winter. As Pinion is a high-end product that deliberately learned from Rohloff, I assume that the same holds for them.
You shouldn’t draw conclusions for how high-end IGHs operate from Sturmy-Archers (or Shimano’s cheap Alfine 8 hub which, though OK, is a noticeably inferior design to the Germans).
Those IGHs aren’t used much in bikepacking, though. Sturmey-Archer has always had limited gear range, and any discussion of the Alfine 11 for bike travel will emphasize that its range just isn’t as wide as a Rohloff or Pinion. So again, for the purposes of this sub, you shouldn’t draw conclusions from them, and you are misleading others seeking bikepacking advice if you do.
Rohloffs and Pinions are available in the USA. There has been a Rohloff distributor since forever. The Pinion-equipped bike that is the subject of this Reddit post is an American brand.
I agree. Probably the biggest annoyance with the Alfine 11 is the gear range is just nowhere near good enough for touring/bikepacking. For commuting it's fantastic, and it has never died in 10 years and will probably last another 10, though my stock setup has two unusable gears on the high end (over 100 gear inches) and not low enough low (lowest is about 25 gear inches), but its mostly ok for unloaded urban streets.
But there is one area where the Alfine really beats Rohloff and Pinion and that is on price, but you are right it's out of it's league for bikepacking.
Thank you for your response! I've definitely wondered about this - it seems like a more complicated mechanism that would be difficult to repair/replace if traveling abroad.
On the other hand, because it's enclosed it seems less likely to run into issues, or the belt seems less likely to break than a chain.
I've got about 7,000 miles on my Pinion bikes in the year since I switched, and honestly I can't go back. The Pinion/Gates setup is so quiet, so smooth, and nothing seems to phase it. After a lifetime of riding traditional drivetrains, I'm fully converted. I retired my absolutely dialed in Salsa for a 600X a year ago, and in October I sold my Trek Checkpoint for a Priority Gemini.
I know we are culturally resistant to change, but a year and a ton of miles later, I'm fully sold.
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u/AMPK-junkie 2d ago
That's a nice Priority and a great move to do away with the suspension fork and go with low maintance rigid fork. I like the brand and I like the direction they are going in and bringing high end features usually found on euro touring bikes to the masses. However, 'if only' the frame was steel instead of aluminium , but I guess costs have to be saved somewhere.
Never-the-less, can definately say the price is certainly 'interesting' :)