Thanks for the reference to Augie Deabler. Its a fun read. He certainly accomplished a lot with his Golden Eagle Bicycle Engine. I don't think you realize that your forum comments against the GEBE come across as awfully negative and disrespectful of a product that was well designed and highly popular... It played a serious role in the popularization of MAB. Certainly there have to be reasons why they closed up the GEBE business. But you don't have to say GEBE was crap to build up Stanton. I've looked at Stanton and they can stand on their own good quality.
Parts for existing GEBE owners: I think I found a link on this forum where I was able to order a spare belt. And, I was able to order repair parts for my Tanaka 3300 PureFire engine from E-Replacement Parts online. Other than that, I don't think there's much else we'll need to keep our GEBE MABs running.
P.S. Augie Deabler clocked his GEBE bike at 32 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Last night riding my Trek GEBE home from work, my speedometer clocked 31.7 mph... Not too shabby!
My comments about their product are colored by 30 years as a bicycle mechanic and working in a tandem and folding bike frame building business. I also have built over a thousand hand-built bike wheels from my time as a mechanic. I know wheels and the
GEBE kit comes set up for 14 gauge spokes. (yes I know they recommend 13 gauge spokes and they once sold better wheels..) After buying the product having the sheave lose it's concentricity as it wears is a big issue as far as I'm concerned.
BTW If you are in touch with Augie ask him how well this friction drive bike climbs hills....
First off: Their sheave will only fit a certain size and type of rear wheel for any length of time with 14 gauge spokes. They absolutely need to be installed on a low flange, 3 cross wheel. I tried one of Augie's used sheaves on a wheel laced 4 cross to Sturmey Archer drum brake and Sachs gear hub, also laced 4 cross and the slots will not work. they also won't work on a high-flange derailleur hub. No-way, not without cutting new slots or recasting the entire drive sheave. These sheaves are best set up on a low-flange hub with 3 cross in 13 gauge spokes. That means buying (or building) an expensive new wheel.
How old is the bike? 5 speed spacing? or cassette 7? Then there's the axle issues. You aren't likely to find many replacement MTB rear wheels in nutted axles, the rack strap mounting to the axle, *absolutely* needs to be nutted. There's a lot of fiddly fettling once the sheave is snapped into place and you mount the motor on the "rack". You need to loosen the engine mounting bolts and align the upper pulley with the lower...
And if you are familiar with Gates' specifics on their gear belt installations, there is a high level of pinion to driven sheave axle alignment accuracy that can go sideways, if the wheel slips in the dropouts, or the rack gets a significant sideways or one sided blow from falling over or glancing off some object. Then there's the need to fix a flat on the ride, best to patch without removing the wheel. Try finding a bike shop willing to work on a bike that is so incredible fussy about their sheave alignments?
These are great drive systems for very anally precise people, the rest of the average owners are going to have their belt shedding Kevlar threads and failing after 300 miles. At $60 a pop for a belt, that's not good economics, and it was the most common complaint about the GEBE system, time and time again. Go through this forum and Motored Bicycles' forum about GEBE drives.
Yes I agree, they're fantastic when really well set up. They don't tolerate much of normal wear/tear and use without carefully realigning the sheaves. There was one forum member on Augie's from Massachusetts who had chronicled his experience with his GEBE drive, he was pretty carefull with his install and loved his GEBE drive, when it worked. It eventually ate 3 belts in his time with it, despite being really careful about his making sure the sheaves were tracking the belt so it didn't rub the side of the upper sheave, which is where most of these drives fail. That's expecting a lot from a 1.25"X 3/16" mild steel strap with no diagonal bracing and a little 5/8" x 1/8" brace to the seatstay bridge. That sometimes failed.
So we'll disagree, I cannot recommend them, the market has spoken on their product and unfortunately they could have done more to improve their system. Their rack mount was crude and needed further refinement. I'm of the opinion that even a decent Blackburn touring rack would have been a better mount. Yeah some people were happy with their GEBE drives, but there also were a lot of people who complained and got very little after sales support and assistance.
