 time for the long-awaited review of the Priority 600X. I'll make this short. It's awesome. And I'm not just saying that because I helped design it. It's truly a sweet bike. First off, I need to thank Priority Bicycles for inviting me to collaborate with them on this beauty. The 600X is the culmination of many months of designing while taking into account years of bikepacking experience to create this dream machine. Our goal was to build something bomb-proof with top-notch components while keeping the price reasonable. And we did it! There is nothing like this on the mass market. You can't go to any bike shop and buy something like the 600X. Here's a quick rundown of how this bike came to be. This March, Dave at Priority called to tell me that Eddie, one of his top guys, was designing a Pinyon bike packing bike and asked if I wanted to give them some feedback. Yes, I'm a huge fan of the Pinyon Gates drivetrain. I've been rocking the Priority 600 as my everyday commuter for over two years. And the idea of using this maintenance-free technology on a bike packing bike got me very excited. After going back and forth a bit on the design, we ordered a prototype. And I told them that I'd like to test it out on the Great Divide mountain bike route. They thought that was a great idea. And in mid-July, I jumped on a shiny new 600X at the border of Canada and Montana. Oh, it's going to be a beautiful day. For the next 1800 miles, I have the time of my life. That route is incredible. If you haven't seen the series, I will link down to it below. I pedaled up and over big mountains across deserts, threw a few rainstorms, and the bike performed like a champ. I did zero maintenance for the entire 1800 miles. None! You can even ask Mira to verify this, and she never lies. Yeah, have a hug? Yeah, give me a hug, buddy. The 600% gear ratio was more than enough for riding up super steep mountains. And I could really hammer on the flats. I'll share an interview that I did with one of the employees from Pinyon later on in this video. You'll learn everything you could ever want to know about Pinyon technology. The TRP 4 piston brakes performed smoothly, especially on the infamous Fleecer Ridge, which ranges from a 16 to 38% grade. The Gates carbon drive handled all the elements. I've been using these carbon drives on a variety of bikes for four years, and I've never had an issue. And here's a fun fact. Gates was founded in Denver in 1911, and these belts are made in Kentucky. Later on in this video I chat with my friend Mark, and he talks all about the ins and outs of these carbon reinforced belts. I will say though that at times it got squeaky on the dusty roads in Montana. This slight annoyance was fixed with a few squirts of water from my water bottle to wash off the belt. But that's a small price to pay for something that lasts three times longer than a chain and never needs to be lubed. The aluminum frame felt snappy and light, and I know there's a lot of debate about steel versus aluminum, so I'm going to have Eddie talk about why they chose aluminum for the 600X. You know, when we went about designing this bike, we wanted a bike that was really going to perform well-loaded. So frame stiffness does come into play with a bike with a lot of weight on it. So aluminum is stiffer than steel, for instance, so we didn't want the bike to feel too wippy when loaded down with a lot of gear. And also aluminum is lighter, so we wanted this bike to perform well, both loaded and unloaded. So aluminum is lighter and stiffer compared to a steel bike. A lot of people think that steel will give you this great ride quality, but on a bike like this that's got tires and suspension. That's going to absorb most of the bumps for you. Now this may sound kind of inconsequential, but I love the grips. Sometimes it's the little things on a bike that make a big difference. They cup your hands nicely. It's kind of like get a little hug for your hands and these little nubbins on the side act like bar ends to rest your hands. The handlebars also have the right amount of backsweep for comfortable days of 8 plus hours in the saddle. Now on to the tires. I really like the minimal tread on these WTB Rangers. They fly on pavement and have enough grip for going up and down loose dirt. I ran these tubeless and didn't get one flat tire on the entire trip. This prototype is great and it performed really well on the divide. But while I was out there I was taking notes about ways to make it even better. And when I got back from the trip Dave, Eddie and I huddled up and I told them what I'd like to see for the final production model. They took into account my ideas, added in some of their own and together we created a dream bike. Now let's talk about the changes we've made. First off a sweet bike needs a sweet logo. I chose the gray frame color to keep the bike low key but it needed a little something something. Get out there! This slogan is something that I've been using since my days at Public Access TV. Hello and welcome to Out There! My mission has always been to inspire my viewers to get off their couches and it's an honor to have this logo on the 600X. And those mountains are the famous flat irons here in Boulder. Thank you Conor at Priority for helping to design this. The ability to carry stuff is essential to bike packing adventures and by stuff I mean beans. So we decided to make the main triangle a little bit bigger in order to accommodate a larger frame bag. The exact dimensions are on the page for this bike. I will link that down below. Okay the new model will also have way more mounting points. We want it to have plenty of places to mount bottle cages or gear cages and maybe even a rear rack. Eddie tell us where they are. So we've got bottle cage mounts on the inside of the frame, also on the bottom of the down tube, on the top of the top tube and something that is totally new as far as I know which is cage mounts on the seat stays as well. So even if you fill the frame with a frame bag you can still have bottle cages on the seat stays, on the bottom of the down tube. You can do a solid mount frame bag in the middle of the front triangle. We're gonna have some eyelets here as well. So you can both all kinds of stuff to the bike which is one of the really cool aspects of it. I'm really excited about this change. We've added clearance for up to 2.8 inch tires. I'm a fan of wide tires. You can roll over things more comfortably and it's great for sandy trails like the Baja Divide, one of my favorite places to suffer. I don't ever want to see sand again in my life. Also we're gonna have a tougher tire compound than the light version I have on the Divide. I wore through those tires pretty quickly and the tough model are way more durable. Side note the bike will ship with 2.25 inch rangers. Okay this is a big one. We're changing out the Rock Shock Reba for the Wren fork and I know you're all thinking what is the Wren? I've never heard of them. Well Wren is an awesome little company out of Southern California and they make great components. There are many reasons to like this fork but for me the best attribute is the tune ability. It has 2 air chambers to fine tune your ride. It's also very durable and serviceable and it has 110 millimeters of travel as opposed to the 100 millimeters on the Reba. I've been riding this fork for the past few months on much rougher terrain than the Divide and it performs great. And the story about how this came to be is pretty cool. This past January on the Baja Divide I met a crew of riders from Alaska. One of them was a friendly fellow named Cameron who happens to work for Wren. He contacted me after I got back from the Divide and said that he'd like me to try out the Wren fork. I said we already have the Reba and it works fine and he said no dude listen to me this is way better. To make a long story short he sent it I tried it Eddie tried it and we love it. Since I'm relatively new to this fork I invited Cameron to talk about why this fork is so awesome. Pretty much nobody knows about this fork it's not one of the big names out there. I've been riding it for the past three months. I love it. There's some things that are a little bit different about it and let's just I would love for you to talk about it. Yeah the first thing you'll notice is that the fork is inverted or upside down or as we call it right side up. So when you flip a fork upside down you'll notice that like motorcycles do this all the time. Most motorcycles you'll see the fork the stanchion the part that moves up and down through the chassis is down low. Yeah well there are just some inherent advantages to everyone who bikes when you set up a fork this way. You take the internals and you put that weight up on the top and that means your lower weight is more minimal so that's your unsprung weight. So what that means in reality in layman's terms is that the the travel readily takes impacts more easily because it doesn't have all that weight to have to push through the system so there's less weight for it to push through the system so it likes to engage more readily. So that that is really advantageous for people like us who are bike packers you know this is going on the 600x which is meant to be an adventure machine. You might go from you know single track to maybe a long section of gravel road and your traditional fork might do everything you wanted to do on a single track but when you get to the gravel road those smaller vibrations are just a little bit too small for it to pick up for it to for a traditional fork to want to engage with and because our fork is inverting you're able to better refine it for a wider variety of little bumps. So especially if you're doing you know a 90 mile day on the Baja divide it's going to give you more comfortability through that spectrum of riding throughout the day. And what I really like is you can turn the dial and make it stiff and it's hard as a rock you know it's a regular fork. You'll see a lot of you know you'll notice between Fox and Rockshox and Cannondale and us and everybody lockouts are not always created equal and our lockout is rock solid you can't move the fork so if you you know if you're hitting pavement or whatnot you know you're gonna feel it which is also you know a really good boon to bike packers. There's a number of really unique things about this fork. First of all if you are a bit of a tinker or you do your own work at home this fork is entirely tunable with just layman's tools. If you go to a bike shop or if you've tried to change your bottom bracket or something like that you realize there's like a thousand different tools just to take a bottom bracket off. This fork can be disassembled with just basic sockets and wrenches. Nothing special which becomes increasingly more important if you're in you know Baja Mexico or South America. Yeah so no matter where you are you can find the tools you need to fix it. We have distribution centers around the world so we can get you parts really quick in the instance you do need to fix something. This is a damper so this sits in the non-air side of the bike and what's really interesting about our system is that there's no oil bath so there's no like sitting reservoir of oil down in the fork leg. It's all inside this which makes the servicing really easy and it's one of the many steps we took to make our fork work all the way down to 30 below zero because we do fat bike fork as well getting out. Wait say that again. How cold? 30 below zero. 30 below. Wow okay. So you know I've rode mine at 30 below zero. I live in Alaska a lot of people they don't need that probably very few of the 600x riders will be riding at 30 below but you know forks do stop they have the different tendencies once you get below freezing and then once you get below zero a lot of forks just don't really function as they should at all. Combining the inverted fork technology and taking into account the ease of serviceability anywhere around the world the final and probably one of the most important features of our fork for a bike packer is the twin air chambers that we have. So we have a upper and lower chamber and a moving piston on the inside and that lower chamber allows you to adjust the travel stroke progression through the suspension. So on the 600x there's 110 millimeters of travel and you can adjust how that travel behaves through its stroke. So that allows you by adjusting the air in the bottom of that fork it allows you to say I'm gonna let the initial stroke be very soft and I'm gonna set the final stroke to be quite firm because when you're riding in again the Baja divide like we were doing just last spring you know as well as I do that for the most part you're hitting a lot of tiny tiny tiny bumps and then all of a sudden you're barreling down some giant mountain and you get to the bottom and all of a sudden you've got like small baby size boulders and holes that are you know a foot and a half deep all over the place. So you know that's kind of your you get out of jail free card you've set your progression to be really aggressive at the very end so you're saving that last little bit of travel for that oh my god moment when you're coming into the you know the baby boulders and you just need that little bit of extra extra travel in the reserves. Getting to know you better and getting to know Ren better it seems that you really pride yourselves on helping your customers out if anybody does have a problem they can just contact you not you specifically but somebody on the team and you'll work them through it right. Yeah I will Skype with anybody if you're on the fork or is even interested in getting a report just like this the thing that brought me to work with with Ren on these projects is because I'd never seen the owner of a company actively involving himself in every single clients you know world figuring out what they're doing and what helps them you know I you don't see that from Fox you don't see that from Rockshots it's not something in the industry we talk about it's being a value that you're buying into and frankly I think it's one of the biggest values that you buy into it's an honor to be flying the Ren flag on the front of this 600X you guys are awesome I love having bottles on my front forks and I wanted to make sure it worked out with this inverted setup so I got out my hose clamps clamped on some cages put on my big cans and there's plenty of clearance and yes it will come with the carbon bash guards and a shock pump now I know a lot of you love dynamo hubs but this one didn't charge my items like I had hoped so we're taking it out I found that it was a lot more efficient to plug in my 2,000 milliamp power bank every few days this thing can charge my phone six times and only cost 50 bucks this is the way to go the bike will also be dropper post ready it won't come with a dropper post but if you want to add it on later the internal routing is there this is great for technical downhills when you need to get way back behind your seat to prevent flipping over your handlebars that's no fun everybody hates that this seat is awesome it's the WTB Pure but we're swapping it out for the WTB Volt it's a very similar seat but has a lower profile and don't worry it's just as comfortable as the pure I've been testing it out for the past two months and my butt is very happy and this might be a first for a bike packing bike the 600 X will have a beefy kickstand I know that it sounds like a silly idea for a bike like this but let me tell you why I like it at the end of my days I'm always searching for a tree to lean my bike up against to get out all my stuff and sometimes there aren't any good trees well this kickstand will allow you to prop it up anywhere BAM kickstands are cool again alright that's all the changes we made an awesome bike even awesomer yeah that's a word the heart and soul of this bike is the pinion gate setup this bike has the 12 speed gearbox it's smooth extremely low maintenance and there are more gears than I ever needed each click on the dial is a 17% step there's no overlap like a traditional drivetrain you've heard me talk about how much I love pinion in past videos so this time I got Dirk from pinion to talk about their product what's up Dirk how you doing my man hey Ryan how are you thank you so much for joining me I know it's 5 p.m. in Germany it's time for a drink and you're taking time to talk to my audience I appreciate that thank you so much hello everybody now my name is Dirk I'm from pinion I'm head of design and marketing here in headquarter in Germany nearby Stuttgart yeah pinion is a little small company a quite small company it's not that big like they are the other players on the on the market but we are quite innovative and this is since 2006 already because in this year the two founders of pinion had the idea to yeah lounger lounger completely new gearbox but it took almost four years to be on the markets and actually it was early 2011 when the first pinion gearbox works in serial production so that means it was quite a long time and I'm very happy to be with pinion since then wow well I've been using pinion for a couple years I absolutely love it my audience has heard me talk about pinion all the time so I thought it'd be interesting for you to tell us why it's so amazing and I the question I get a lot from my viewers is what is happening inside the gearbox how many components are in there it's gotta be complicated this is this is really quite interesting we always have this kind of question because it's a black box nobody can see inside and we actually tell our customers don't open it because it's a sealed box there's a little bit of oil inside and it has to be sealed and it will be sealed all the time if you don't open it and yes inside the gearbox there are more than 140 parts working together very precisely like on your automatic watch on your wrist maybe so this is really a masterpiece of engineering because it's a completely new and patented design the two engineers designed a couple of years ago and yes it took a long time to really make it durable and now and since the beginning of our serial production it's completely durable that means all the engineering and all the design inside is based on automotive standards and also our suppliers because we don't manufacture the cocks and all the parts and the shafts inside the gearbox we don't produce by ourselves they are produced by German automotive suppliers and it's first class quality it's completely made in Germany yes it's completely made in Germany so our suppliers are really close by we have a very good relationship them and we really are focusing on making the next step with them we don't go to any other countries in some parts are from from Switzerland yes and but the most parts are from Germany I've had mine for two years nothing ever goes wrong and that's why I love it so much but you still you have a five-year warranty on this if something does happen people can send it in is that true of course of course yes so what we did three years ago now we are almost eight years on the market and what we did three years ago is that we are very convinced of our technology because we have five years experience in the market in 2015 and that means we were able to send out the message that we guarantee the five-year warranty of the gearbox because this is our experience period of time and now we are almost ten years on the market and yeah let's see what happened because we are pretty fine with the internals and the design of the internals because now we see the customers do more than 100,000 kilometers with one gearbox without any issue I just had a phone call with another customer a week ago and he is based in Frankfurt Germany as well and he did 140,000 kilometers with one gearbox and it's still the first one and there's nothing to do only an hour change each 10,000 kilometers do you think gearboxes are the future right now you're the only one in the game there's roll-off which is a completely different design but do you think more bikes are gonna go this direction yes of course we are totally convinced of this roll-off company you mentioned it's also a very good one but actually we are the only and first one who plays it in the right place on the bike really in the center really low to make the bike with the best balanced feeling during riding and this is where the power is going to be inside the bike this is place between your legs and this is the place we choose for our gearbox design and this is quite unique but actually the gearbox technique itself it's quite it makes sense because you have a sealed box you don't have to do anything during the year with your gearbox you don't have to adjust the shifting of stuff and this is what consumers and people like today they don't want to go each 100 kilometer and adjust a little screw a little bit to the right a little bit to the left have this all this trouble with dirt dust snow ice salt in the end so this is actually not the thing people like to have a convenient product and this is why we see also for e-bikes example in that this technique will be the future yeah absolutely you know I would like to know how do you say pinion gearbox in German get the central shut down or the central get the shut down and this is something very German of course central yeah I need to get better at German I am very impressed and I know you took your Friday evening to chat with me and it's not your own and I really appreciate it Ryan always as much as you want as often as you want I hope you are very pleased with your with your bike and you have found a lot and also for the next couple of years absolutely oh for forever I'm opinion fan for life baby and I can't invite the pinion guy on without giving gates their moment to shine here's Mark with everything you ever wanted to know about the carbon drive one of the questions I get a lot is what is this thing made out of why is it so strong and space age sure well yeah well so dig right into it so it's a it's a polyurethane belt okay the body of the belt is made out of polyurethane which is a super great sort of material to make a belt out of because unlike rubber it doesn't absorb water it's not really affected as much by temperature so it's super stable so regardless where you're riding your bike it's gonna perform the same and a variety of conditions inside the belt the main the reason it's called carbon drive is because the the actual tensile member inside the belt that the the piece that actually bears sort of the load and the tension and and everything while you're cycling is going to be made out of carbon fiber so there's a series of just continuous little strands inside there that are molded into the belt so makes for a pretty sturdy pretty sturdy right and what's really interesting about this is Gates as a company has been around for a long time really quickly can you tell us what does Gates make besides these things is a teeny teeny teeny fraction of what Gates does yeah so the the bicycle components are less than 1% of Gates sort of total business so you know we're primarily focused in industrial and automotive applications both in power transmission and then also fluid power so hydraulics and cooling and stuff like that on the belt side there's really two kinds of belts that we do we do V belts which would be like your accessory drive belts for cars so things like your alternator belt that sort of thing that's gonna be friction drive belt so not really relevant to us on the bike side and then sort of the more technically advanced belts are all gonna be synchronous belt so think of the belts on like a Harley Davidson or like a timing belt in your car something like that so the world that we work in with the bicycle products is really you know 100% synchronous and it's all really it sort of the high end of the materials and the designs that we work with at Gates so what you're saying is this thing has a lot of years of R&D behind it yeah yeah so I mean Gates started in 1911 first belt products were really coming out around 1917 so yeah we're we're over a hundred years now doing belts the technology that's really in these belts really has its origins and kind of like the mid 80s is when they really got heavy into synchronous belts and then it's just been you know refinements over time so yeah I think that there's been a lot of a lot of super smart people having some thoughts about these belts for a long time so yeah the final product has been has been pretty great these have been in the market now for about 12 years for bikes and I think they definitely established a pretty solid reputation so we're happy with it very cool are you the only company in the world that makes these so we're we're the only ones who really produce a belt that's specific with specifically for cycling so you'll see there's other competitive belts out there typically they're gonna use more of an off-the-shelf industrial belt so you'll notice maybe the tooth size on those belts is either a little smaller a little bigger and then the shape of the tooth is typically gonna be different because it's actually designed for a different application completely those are typically for like an industrial thing where you have a drive that's spinning at a much higher RPM so it's it's a low torque sort of high RPM high power application versus on a bicycle it's completely different where you have extremely low RPM extremely high torque and so you need a completely different type of belt to really handle those types of loads so we use a little bit bigger tooth than what you might find on an industrial belt of like similar power capacity and then the tooth shape is actually different too so we've done a lot to try to optimize the belt for bikes and that's something our competitors really haven't to this point really haven't been able to to do so yeah it's the only really specifically for bikes and you're from Colorado which I love yeah quick question I always tell people that these are three times stronger than a chain that's just what I've heard what happens when it's the end of its life does it break or is it just kind of wear out sure so the failure mode for a belt it's it's actually interesting so we're always talking about how belts don't stretch at all over their entire life which is a hundred percent true the tensile cord inside the belt the day that it's you know fresh off the assembly line to the day you know get rid of it it's gonna be the same length so what happens over time is the teeth of the belt the polyurethane teeth will actually you know begin to sort of wear away and degrade and so if you see a belt like at the very end of its life it's just ready for you know to be to be recycled or whatever the teeth would be you know cracked at the bases a lot of it will be completely worn away but the belt should never you know break that's definitely not it's designed failure mode so but yeah longevity of it varies greatly based on where you're riding you know someone who's in like an urban environment riding in like fair weather conditions you know they'll get you know thousands of miles you know we've had customers get tens of thousands of miles out of a drive versus someone who's riding off-road you have a lot of sand and dirt and debris of course all of that's gonna you know wear away at all the materials on the belt and the sprockets much faster and so that's gonna lead to a you know quite a bit shorter life so we typically don't try to give a mileage you know estimate because it varies highly based on where you are what we can say is typically compared to a chain you know chains gonna have the same problem right if you're in a demanding environment it's not gonna last as long so we can say typically for the same environment a belt's gonna last two to three times longer than a chain wouldn't those those same in those same areas the flip side of course like day-to-day there's no maintenance on on the belt so like with a chain it's like you're thinking okay I got to keep this thing in tip-top shape I got to keep it lubricated I got to keep it adjusted versus the belt you're just not having to have that that thought so it's a easy system to get along with it lasts a long time it doesn't ask a lot of you throughout its life you know I've heard so I've read a lot all the articles about this and some people say that it's less efficient than a traditional drivetrain I mean I've never noticed anything I mean if there is anything I'm guessing it's teeny what what do you say so it's crazy I mean for probably 10 years or more this has been a conversation and there's been lots of independent studies that have different outcomes people saying you know this is more efficient or less efficient this is more efficient beyond a certain power at the end of the day the reoccurring theme in all of those tests is that the differences when they do exist are extremely small we're talking fractions of a percent to the point that there's so many other variables in your bike to actually be able to discern oh this belt is less efficient than this chain in a circumstance it's not really something that you or I would ever notice as we were writing so I mean Gates has been we've been pretty cautious about making claims because depending on how it's tested the outcomes can be completely different so we haven't really said oh this test is right this test is wrong we've basically just said there's all this testing people have opinions but at the end of the day people who actually ride these products know that there's not a discernible difference so we're not really gonna try to put an opinion out there can you make these in hot pink oh we can you need a minimum order of probably a couple thousand but yeah I think there's been a pink one now that I think about it but I find one I'll send it to you Ryan yeah well maybe in the future the 600 X can have like a jazzy color or something yeah we can work something out we've done that clear belt and we've done the red belt I know we've had a orange belt before so yeah talk to Dave let's make it happen all right I love it I love it well anyway I know it's Friday and you have things to do and huge parties to go to but I really appreciate you chatting with me and I will proudly be using my belt drive on on all my bikes now so thank you so much opinion and gates perfect combo just like Ernie and Bert when I squeeze you you make noise okay I'm guessing that you might want to know how much this bike cost well it's a darn good deal for everything that you get the 600 X is $3,500 like I said at the beginning we wanted to keep the price reasonable and I know 3500 is a lot for a bike but you're getting a lot of bike for $3,500 and for the first batch of these bikes the price is only 3,000 now if you're interested in getting this bike for this price I suggest clicking off this video right now go into the priority website ordering this bike we've been pre-selling since July and we're almost out there will be more in the future but you'll have to wait longer and we all know that it's no fun to wait for a bike this is a long video I hope that answers most of your questions if not the guys at priority are very responsive I'm doing my best to answer everything here so that Dave doesn't get calls at midnight about how much this bike weighs wait I haven't talked about that the large is about 33 pounds and that includes pedals which are included how often does that happen nowadays you know what I'm most psyched about this whole process of creating this bike is that we're essentially making it with friends we know almost everybody involved in this whether it's Dave, Eddie, Connor, Dirk, Mark, Cameron, me there's been a lot of love put into this bike to make sure it is as cool as possible I gotta take this moment to plug my own channel if you're new here I have adventure videos from all over this beautiful planet and the goal is to inspire you to get out there so check them out and like and subscribe and do all that other YouTube-y stuff now I want to end by giving a huge thanks to Dave and Eddie and the entire team at priority for making this bike possible and for helping make a longtime dream of mine riding the divide a reality okay have a good one everybody and we will see you down the road