Ochain: a chainless feeling on your bike

[Press release] – Ochain is a new brand born to let you experience new riding possibilities. We want you to have chainless feeling on your bike, but with your chain on.

“When everything started it was September 2014, I was staring at the monitor, watching the UCI World Champs in Hafjell, just like a typical downhill rider and fan. When Mulally had his incredible chainless ride, my inner nerd and engineer started to ruminate” what sort of advantage could came from this situation for the rider or for his bike? “. One year later, nearly the same thing happened again in front of me, with Aaron Gwin winning in Leogang: Chainless. ”
Fabrizio Dragoni, Ochain Ceo and MTB engineer and rider

Ochain is an active spider, fully mechanical and fitting most crankset on the market thanks to the use of the most commonly used direct mount chainring standards. Ochain automatically isolates transmission from suspension when needed, resulting in the absence of pedal kickback. This allows smoother and comfortable riding, great braking performance, tire and rim preserving and much more. Ochain engages the chainring steadily while pedaling, thus making the transmission exactly like the standard one.

Compromise must be expected as contemporary mountain bikes are inevitably a byproduct: pedal kickback is one of the consequences, affecting rear suspension performance, despite the best engineers’ efforts. Considering the setup possibilities, there is no “right” or “wrong”, but the need for a real understanding of what makes things flow at their best.

Ochain has been developed with the help of UCI world cup downhill riders like Loris Revelli and Simone Medici and is currently being tested by some others big names in mtb, but we can’t reveal who they are.

Finally free from chain limitations, your bike can now seamlessly transfer bumps and shocks from your pedals to your suspension.

Use and performance

Just throw out of the window your 120 points of engagement hub? Absolutely not, on the contrary: the degrees from the freewheel are random available and hard (steel on steel feeling) during the engagement. With Ochain you can decide how many degrees (by replacing our elastomers) always maintaining a smooth and silent pedal engagement.

Ochain is a new component available in MTB setup. One can decide whether to use it in its different configurations or not; we are eager to see how the MTB world will receive it. Ochain can be used from your downhill machine to your low travel trail bike, from enduro race bike to XC race full bike. See our first on field suggestions in the chart below:

Compatibility

Ochain is located in a formerly unoccupied area of the bike where there aren’t tons of space available. We contrived to reduce the component size in order to fit most standard mtb frames like the biggest carbon frames with a BB30 pressfit standard. As to the downhill chainguide there are some products which have to be adjusted in order to be used with Ochain.

Ochain is 52mm chainline Boost only (we are working on SuperBoost standard) and requires a BCD 104 chainring standard. Fit from 30t to 36t chainrings on market.

SRAM, RaceFace, e*thirteen and Ingrid are available for both models. We are working to add other standards, available soon on our webstore.

Prices and availability

• Ochain Nero is offered at 298€ (including titanium nuts and VAT)
• We are offering our customers the opportunity to purchase Ochain as well as Ochain Titanium Nut and Carbon-Ti chainrings as a ready-to-ride kit. Discover all versions on ochain.bike/ochain-products.

Ochain should have been available on our website in Europe starting from March 2020, but unfortunately this new situation of the Corona Virus has forced us to temporarily stop production. We plan to reopen the store from June 2020. Pre-orders available on our webshop.