After 18 months, I am enjoying the belt drive which delivers on the promises made: It is clean, quiet, looks great and was quite easy to fit. It shows no signs of wear. However it has made it harder to pedal, due to a difference in gearing compared to the stock bike. To me, it feels like starting off in 2nd gear. I live in a hilly area, so this is an issue.
My workaround is to set the VanMoof S3 shift points to higher numbers so it almost never gets into 4th gear. But that isn’t great as I’m still limited by the very tall first gear. (My change up speeds are: 1–2: 12 mph; 2-3: 18 mph; 3-4: 24 mph, and change down is 8, 14 and 18 mph). I may also try a longer crank, though this could strike the ground when cornering.
I reached out to Veer support regarding this in January 2023, and asked whether they might offer either smaller belt ring or a larger rear sprocket. Something that will mean I needn’t put in quite so much effort to get the bike moving, or can get it up some of the steep hills around here. The response is "At the moment we don't have either of those but we do plan on making a larger rear cog for that hub in the future. I don't have a timeline on that at the moment since we have a few other large projects we are working on first. Likely won't be available until late this year [2023]."
So there you have it. It is brilliant, but flawed. Once there is a bigger cog or smaller beltring it will be perfect for me.
