Nicolai Nucleon: Supre Drive
Supre Drive
The Supre Drive is a creation from Canada. Cedric Eveleigh, the founder of Lal-Bikes created this drivetrain to offer a halfway house between a gearbox and a derailleur system: the efficiency and customer-friendly maintenance of a derailleur and the protection from the trail and reliability of a gearbox.
The frame arrived with the drivetrain fully installed except for the shifter and cable, so it was an easy job to finish when piecing the bike together.
The Supre Drive system uses a Shimano XT shifter, chain, and cassette mixed with some custom parts to make the ‘derailleur.’ The Supre system essentially splits the classic derailleur in two: the rear part shifts the chain across the gears and the extra pulley wheel at the front (above the chainring and below the idler pulley) moves to take up the slack of the chain as cassette sprockets get smaller. The Shimano wear and tear parts are easy to source and the likelihood of breaking the proprietary parts is very low.
This system also uses the swingarm shape to carry and enclose the shifting and the cassette and protect it from incoming trail damage or in a crash, as well as protect the disc rotor and rear brake caliper on the non-drive side.
This system uses a spring and damper hidden in the downtube connected to the front ‘derailleur’ pulley to keep the chain under tension and flap-free. During testing, the drivetrain was perfectly silent and I and never dropped a chain which is a good start, despite having also broken the guide on the top idler wheel in transit - Nicolai did say this guide is only really needed on the UDH/normal drivetrain version of the same frame.
How did it perform? Well, slowly. The shifting is slower than on a normal derailleur - I don’t know by how much but would guess =50%. This is because of the way the chain is now wrapped much further around the cassette so you click the shifter and then have to wait for it to rotate all the way around to the top of the cassette to feel the change. Within this wait time, you have to feather the power through the pedals in the same way as a normal derailleur so you don’t stress the chain when it is cross-engaged between two sprockets. Shifting time is longer in the easier gears at a lower speed, but once you are about halfway down the cassette it's closer to a derailleur.
Another minor problem: in 5th gear the chain touches the frame, just enough to have lightly scratched the paint.
I also struggled to tune the shifting perfectly in the beginning; it either wouldn’t drop into the smallest sprockets and was doing some strange things if I tried to shift a bunch of gears at the same time: jumping a few gears on up the cassette and needing a few gentle crank rotations to let it settle down and get back in line.
In January, I received a box with a new drivetrain: this is a slightly updated version which should be more robust with machined parts instead of 3D printed. I also spoke to Lal Bikes, and they said they’d been having problems with ‘over shift’. Changing down multiple clicks into easier gears, the derailleur could push the chain too far, then it drops back into the correct gear: for example, I’m in 5th gear. I click to shift down 2 gears, but the chain jumps 3x into 2nd, and then it starts to drop into the correct 3rd gear. While this is happening there is a moment when the chain at the top of the cassette is still in 5th, most of the chain wrapped around the cassette is incorrectly in 2nd and the chain closest to the derailleur wheel is now in 3rd. This results in a very long change and some nasty crunching noises.
I fitted the new derailleur parts but this problem persisted. Later I received some lighter-weight oil to change in the damper, so after stripping half of the bike for the second time I changed the oil in the damper cartridge that is inside the downtube. This lighter oil did improve things. The overshifting in the easier gears only seems to happen very occasionally now (3x times in the last 25km ride). When multi-shifting up into harder gears (chain going down the cassette) the chain can also flap a little with a lack of tension as the hydraulic tensioner catches up to give the correct tension.
The Supre Drive the wear and tear parts are easy to source and the likelihood of breaking the proprietary parts is very low. Unfortunately, it doesn't beat the positives of a Pinion (unsprung weight, no maintenance) or the benefits of a derailleur (easy-to-source parts, precise shifting). It’s a great idea, but I can’t see the system taking off especially considering the need to design the frame around the Supre Drive.
After writing the above article I sent it to Lal Bikes to check. I received the following response:
“Regarding the shifting issues that you observed, here’s the full story of what’s going on. It is indeed the case that the shifting issues are far worse on some Nucleon bikes than others. We have since entirely solved the issue by changing the mounting position of the derailleur. I included a photo below of a prototype dropout that I machined back in October and which has the new derailleur mounting position. We thoroughly tested this dropout, and then I sent it to Nicolai - they installed it on a Nucleon that previously wouldn’t shift at all out of the first gear, and it now shifts well. Unfortunately, by the time we at Lal solved this issue, Nicolai had already invested in a big amount of dropouts. So far, they haven’t replaced these dropouts. I wish that I had found the solution to the shifting issues earlier, but unfortunately, the issue varies from one Nucleon to another, and the only Nucleon bike that we at Lal Bikes had on hand for the first part of the project does not have the shifting issue. This made it difficult for us to troubleshoot and solve the issue until we received a second Nucleon last September, by the time Nicolai had already invested in a production quantity of dropouts. I now realize that it would have been better if frame and drivetrain R&D were geographically closer together, or if things hadn’t moved so fast toward production quantities of frames being built.
Nicolai’s willingness to pursue new, innovative ideas is remarkable, and it has been great to collaborate with them on the Nucleon, the first production bike with the Supre Drive. But in general, my experience with the development of the Nucleon is that it was rushed. I recall having a call with Kalle Nicolai early in the project telling him that he’s going so fast that it’s like having early customers do R&D, and he said that this is ok and that customers will be made aware of the situation. Perhaps this is ok if Nicolai is ready to cover the cost of replacement parts for addressing performance issues that are solved later on. It would be great if Nicolai invested in replacing the dropouts of the Nucleon frames that are out there, as it would solve the shifting issues, including the overshifting and the slowness, that you experienced.”
After this I also reached out to Nicolai Bikes for a response.
“Nicolai Bikes has always been one of the pioneers in the mountain bike industry using alternative drivetrain solutions. We were and still are convinced by the advantages the SUPRE Drive offers compared to a conventional drivetrain.
Entering the market with a new idea is never easy. And competing with big players that put decades into development makes it even more difficult.
It’s an amazing progress that LAL and Nicolai made over the last year. And with all the small improvements that have been made. The shifting performance of SUPRE drive really is able to compete with the market while offering undeniable advantages.
Cedric from SUPRE drive will continue to improve the system year by year. We are all looking forward to it. ”
Overall the Supre Drive system does work, but not quite perfectly in my test. Lal Bikes reports that it seems to be some of the frames that have an issue while others work fine. This review took much longer than usual due to the pedantic amount of testing I did and being determined to get to the bottom of this situation. I’ve read some other reviews of Nucleon’s online and they all seem to have received lucky frames with no issues as I can’t find any reports of shifting issues. I checked with three of my followers with the same frames and they all had the same issues as me, unfortunately.
Nicolai Bikes are also kindly offering customers replacement parts to change their Supre Nucleon into the UDH version if they are not satisfied - this includes the lucky winner of this bike if they wish to change. Would I change? No, the Supre system works well enough to enjoy the ride.
Next Article, coming soon: Overview
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