No more oily hands

AT10 PU timing belt replaces chain on bicycles.

Because he was fed up with constantly getting his hands dirty from oily bicycle chains and by the difficulty in disassembling and transporting traditional bicycles, former mechanical engineer Hubert Coenen from Stadhagen near Hanover came upon the Synchronflex PU timing belt and soon became an enthusiastic fan of its decisive benefits.

Some of the blame goes to his 27-year old son Mike, for the last 15 years one of those rare people in the world who can do things on a filigree trick bike without braking, back-pedalling or changing gears in which the laws of gravity on the handlebars seem to be suspended.

It was for him that the amateur DIY enthusiast from Lower Saxony wanted to build a very special trick bike that is, in fact, now the focal point of all events. While maintaining all the precision of the load transmission - rapid changes of direction and jumps lead to high stresses of short duration - Mike's bike was also to be easy to disassemble and transport in small vehicles.

Back to the SYNCHROFLEX timing belt on Hubert Coenen's bicycles. Timing belts - the very idea makes you sit up and listen, because just about everyone who rides a bicycle gets fed up with the more or less oily, lengthening and sometimes stubborn chain on their two-wheelers.

After many tests and in close collaboration with engineer Horst Böhm of Mulco partner Wilhelm Herm. Müller from Hanover, a Synchronflex timing belt of dimension AT10 now drives the wheels via a synchronizing disk on the crank and the rear wheel hub.

DIY enthusiast Coenen gave a lot of thought to how to rapidly assemble and disassemble the wheels for transport. After all, an AT10 PU timing belt is of course endless and cannot be divided by a pin like a chain. The solution - since patented - consists in a frame lock that is held only by tension and which enables the timing belt on the rear synchronizing disk to be latched on and off both simply and quickly.

The brilliant drive, which after many tests can now meet Hubert Coenen's requirements and has proven itself in practice both with the heavy-duty trick bike and with private touring cycles, elegantly and convincingly displays all the trumps enjoyed by the PU timing belt over the chain:

• extremely high truth of running
• quiet, monotonic drive
• positive interlocking
• no oiling, no retightening the endless belt
• no friction loss
• minimum wear

Mike Coenen will "really get into training again" in 2002 and show with the timing belt-driven wheel "just where the boundaries are in trick cycling“.

As this astonishing development highlights, there is scarcely any drive problem or application that cannot be optimally resolved with the use of PU timing belts and accessories from the comprehensive Mulco Europe EWIV range.

Hanover, June 2002
Mulco – Europe EWIV