It's good to see that old 'black & white' view of the world in HU where no middle tone or even the slightest tolerance doesn't exist. What I'm amazed of is that comes from people who've presumably been travelling a bit.

I'll try to add my personal humble opinion:

I've replaced my FD bearing on Congo-Angola border with no special tools without any problems.

It looks to me the talk of shaft drive being too complicated and unrepairable is by those who know little or nothing about them or never worked on them on the field outside of the well-equipped garage. Posting catastrophe pictures doesn't say much since there are as many if even more horror stories with chains, whether its grinded output shafts (i.e. common on Africa Twins) or fractured engine casings or damaged swingarms and the list goes on till serious damages to the riders legs or hands or amputations of limbs or even fatal crashes of rear wheel locking up from a broken or poorly adjusted/aligned chain.

I've had chain drived bikes before and still have now. Like all competing systems there's no doubt chain is better in many fields, i.e. short-term extreme offroad rides etc, ultralight performance bikes, it has clear weight and function advantages for certain fields but for me nothing beats shaft drive for simple long distance combined on/offroad overland travel in terms of convenience. I never need to think or fiddle with gearing or carry spare sprockets with me since the factory setting suits me almost perfect. My bike's bottom, rear wheel, sumguard and swingarm are never oily, my pants and boots are always clean of oil drops, I don't have to carry oil or clean/oil the chain afer every long travelling day, I don't have to check the slack, or worry about additional complication of hydraulics when using an automatic chain oiler, my hands are always clean of oil, etc. With shaft drive I just ride. No worries in the weeks of rainy days, or extreme distances of muddy or sandy riding conditions or any other worries. Just ride till it wears the bearing out - just like with your normal wheel bearings. All I carry is spare FD bearing and seal on my travels. I've done a worn FD bearing replacement job 3X on my R1100GS (within 260 000km, some half of this offroad, mostly 2up full luggage covering 6-continents or 80 countries) and by now I can almost predict when it goes and it takes me some couple of hours to replace it with no special tools needed. The FD+seal set costs less, takes less room and weights less than a chain+sprocket set. So living with those pros/cons for me the shaft-drive's a no brainer for long distance overland travel. While I'd prefer chain for some other settings no chain setup replaces shaft-drive for serious long distance overlanding for me, especially now when I know how to field-repair mine when that very rare bad day comes.


IMHO the big downside of the shaft drive is that this fine system is mostly installed only on mammoth-sized bikes today. There're no limits putting this system on smaller bikes, i.e. there are already proven shaft-driven bicycles that can be ridden offroad and I know the people who've pedalled them rave about them. You could probably build an ultralight GasGas tricker bike with a shaft-drive if you really wanted to... It all comes down on how good they are designed and bult IMHO. It's just few or no manufacturers who would even dare to risk by taking such an engineering and marketing challange in todays poor economic climate.

Unsprung weight difference isn't as big as you'd think since shaft itself can be integrated as a supporting mechanism for the swingarm. If I remember someone once compared a R1200 shaft drive with similar chain drive swingarm weights and the difference was surprisingly small. There's also a lot of playroom with different materials and designs, similar like some chain driven competition bikes use to obtain their light weight (i.e. aluminium or even titanium bits, or even a complete carbon-fibre swinarm etc), so it'd be ignorant to stamp shaft drive as some excessivly heavy system with a lot of unsprung weight - when done right - it's not IMO. While it probably won't be good for high-end racing it'd deffo meet most of the demands an offroading enthusiast or an overlander would require.

Personally I think it would be fantastic to have 450-600cc class capable offroad-biased DS bike with a rock-solidly designed and built, field-repairable shaft-drive system that can be used for offroad oriented long distance overland. In fact it'd be a niche market. Understressed torquey long stroke with an air/oil cooled balanced single engine with big oil reserve giving it long engine service intervals - it'd be my dream solo-overlander bike. If 1200cc HP2 managed to get down to 175kg then a 450-600cc class bike would sure get down to 130-145kg range when using decent bits and components. Yes, it'd be fairly more expensive and maybe some 2-3kg heavier than a similar chain driven bike, but if the price is right I'd get it over similar chain driven bike any time of the day. While it isn't perfect, a proper shaft drive just feels, performs and does right for what I do. IMHO design-wise it's elegant in comparison with the usual "dirty-fiddly" multi-link chain drive system. But who knows, maybe I'm just another idiot who doesn't understand anything about adventure travelling.

Just my humble 2c,
Margus