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Here's the First Bike to Use Supre, the Drivetrain With the "World's Toughest Derailleur"

Last year, a Canadian engineer launched the Supre Drive, a mountain bike drivetrain that he invented and boasts of including the world’s toughest, most unbreakable derailleur. Now, for the first time, someone has made a bike that uses the gearing system, and it is available to order, if your wallet’s fat enough, that is.
Nicolai Nucleon 16 Enduro Bike with Supre Drive 26 photos
Photo: Nicolai Bicycles
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Cedric Eveleigh is the mechanical engineer who founded Lal Bikes and the brainiac behind the Supre Drive. As a passionate mountain biker who’s been riding for as long as he can remember, he is well aware of all the technical problems these wheelers come with, and the unreliable, easy-to-break derailleur is the one that bugged him the most. It was what motivated him to invent the Supre Drive, which he claims is reliable like a gearbox, but doesn’t have the drag and weight disadvantages of gearboxes. And most importantly, it solves the problem of derailleurs breaking. The Supre Drive is already patented in Canada and patent-pending internationally. It requires a certain type of frame that's designed specifically for it.

This thing is engineered so that the derailleur has two mount points and to separate the chain-tensioning part of the gear-selecting one. With this new drivetrain, the derailleur only focuses on shifting, while the chain tensioning is moved to a chain tensioner at the middle of the bike. There’s a video at the end of this article that explains exactly how the Supre Drive works.

German manufacturer Nicolai Bicycles is now producing a bike using the Canadian drivetrain. It is a long-travel enduro bike called Nucleon 16, a high-pivot wheeler with 29” wheels and a mullet option in the 160 mm to 180 mm travel range. The bike can also work with a 29” wheel in the front and a 27.5” one in the rear.

Nicolai’s new enduro bike is available in multiple color options and frame sizes from S to XXL. It uses high-quality components from Fox, Magura, Continental, Shimano, Intend, Hope, and the like, and the manufacturer sells it both as a frameset with shock and the Supre Drive or as a complete bike. You can find all the details on it on the company’s website, where you can also place an order for it.
The Nucleon 16 starts at €3,100 (approximately $3,150) as a frame, while the complete bike starts at €7,500 ($7,610).

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About the author: Cristina Mircea
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Cristina’s always found writing more comfortable to do than speaking, which is why she chose print over broadcast media in college. When she’s not typing, she also loves riding non-motorized two-wheelers, going on hikes with her dog, and rocking her electric guitars.
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