LogFAQs > #974770316

BlackScythe0 posted...

When I saw wheeless I was expecting something without wheels...

Depending on how you define "wheels," that might not actually be possible. Gears can be considered wheels, after all, as can any other simple rotating machine (including the shafts in belt drive systems). Treads are about the closest you can get to "wheel-less" without making some kind of walking mechanism, and even with a walking mechanism you're probably going to have one or more wheels somewhere in there (plus the notion of pedal-powered walking is... exceptionally silly). While treads are not themselves wheels, they're powered by wheels, so they're still not truly "wheel-less."

Dikitain posted...

Looks like he is putting in a lot of peddling work for very little forward momentum.

That's the nature of treads in general: The wheels you're powering to move the treads tend to be relatively small, in this case roughly the same size as the gear that's turning them. That's good for high-torque systems, but not so much for speed. He's mitigated this to a certain extent by connecting the crankset to a secondary axle that fixes a smaller gear to a larger one, ultimately reducing the final gear ratio, but it's still not going to compare to the kind of speed you can get by fixing a 3-inch gear to a 30-inch wheel.