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Gates Carbon Drive adds ‘city bike’ belt to line

  • Ron 

In a move that will likely see greater adoption of their carbon belt drive technology on mass market bikes, Gates Carbon Drive is adding a “value oriented” product line designed for lower-mileage pavement and city bikes.

While the Gates Carbon Drive CDN™ system has the same carbon fiber tensile cord technology and CenterTrack sprocket design as their premium CDX™ system, it comes in at about half the cost.

“CDN is our value-oriented belt drive for people who want a clean and stylish city bike for getting into town or around the neighborhood,” says Todd Sellden, director of Gates Carbon Drive. “It’s for bicyclists who ride in jeans or skirts and casual shoes, not spandex and race gear.”

The CDN belt has nine carbon cords embedded within an engineered polymer belt with a patented 11 millimeter tooth pitch profile optimized for lower tension. The front sprocket is made from reinforced composite embedded with glass fibers and comes as an integrated crank assembly for easy factory installation. The rear sprocket is wear-resistant steel.

Five years in development, the CDN belts are manufactured at the Gates plant in Dumfries, Scotland, a leading producer of automotive belts and the center for Gates’ belt development group in Europe. CDX and CDC™ belts are still manufactured in the USA at the Gates plant in Kentucky. CDX remains the application for mountain biking, cyclocross racing and long-distance bike touring.

Gates will launch CDN at the Taipei Bike Show and is currently booking appointments. “Interest is high,” says Frank Scurlock, global sales director for Gates Carbon Drive. “Brands have been asking for this, with the goal of using it on high volume bike models for the general public.”

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