Look KG 221 Belt Drive Nexus inter-8 commuter

An idea in the back of my head after building a couple bastardized old Look KG single speed commuters in the US has always been to unbolt the rear triangle screw and sneak in a gates belt somehow. In Copenhagen a friend shared his dirty fetish of making a light titanium vintage internally geared commuter and somehow the two ideas merged with the limit of somehow making a lugged carbon bastard on a budget under 7000dkk. Months of eBay, DBA, FB marketplace, and donated parts have led to something almost ready.

First step was finding a cheap carbon frame with a bolted rear seatstay to chainstay. Aesthetically a LOOK kg86, 96, 196 OR TVT carbon frame were preferred because of the livery but especially because of the old horizontal dropout that could be used to tension. Unfortunately the cheapest 58cm frame we found was a kg221 in the UK with vertical dropouts. Higher end models had sliding vertical dropouts that would have worked even better. This one also has alloy seatstays and fork:

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Some of the old tragedies back in the US:

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yes, i like this.

Non bastard

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221 arrived in a dirty semi sad state, but luckily with seatpost bolt. The original plan was to reuse old components from my Bob Jackson vigorelli commuter that have been upgraded.

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Old generic parts from Bob should have been used after being upgraded and sitting around. Idea was to lace the 36h rear rim to a rim-brake shimano inter-8 nexus hub that would be narrowed to 130mm

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Silver wasn’t going to cut it after a test. Plus all the gates driveline components are black so the executive decision was to move to black parts

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With some luck a local parts market led us to a cheap 25mm carbon bianchi seatpost, brake levers, shifters, a knockoff rotor 130bcd crank , and a random 700c wheel with a black nexus 8-speed hub without coaster or disc brake. New 105 calipers were ordered and a campy cable bosses replaced the silver Shimano ones. A black tange headset and risers were added and nos gp4000s without branding were mounted

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Brakes with temporary carbon tubulars

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Being a vertical dropout frame, an external eccentric bb from VeloOrange hopefully will solve the belt length and tensioning issues. It’s made for 30mm cranks but for some reason the fake rotor crank is 30mm on one side and slightly smaller on the non drove side with an alloy bushing, but not sram sized. I shaved some width off of the bushing and got it to fit the new bb.

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A trip to Japan involved bluelug and resulted in some wider nitro bars, grips, and chainring bolts to mount a 55T gates “chainring”

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Not wanting to use the nexus grip shifter limits you a bit, but the solution ended up being a lever from microshift with appropriate indexing for the inter8 hub

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Moment of truth splitting the rear stays went the harder of the two expected ways. The original hex screw was loctite’d im and super soft so stripped instantly. The backup plan was always to drill it out and thread the hole to an M6. Don’t know if just loctite and an m6 into an Alu thread sounds ideal, so there might be a locknut added from the outside for the final.

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3D printed an adapter to be able to clamp on temporary fenders onto the nexus hub nut

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This is so much effort to make something so esoteric. I love it.

Fun project dude!

Love everything about this. Sub'd

v cool...

never ridden with a belt drive. whats that like?

Stellar work

Love it. Subbed

What seatpost you using for this?

Admirably mad. Kudos.

Top thread!

Ingenious!

This is nuts. Look forward to the finished bike.

So is the chainstay bonded to the dropout and the seat stay just bolted?