The new Pilot Scram Pinion is the world’s first gravel bike with Pinion’s electronic Smart.Shift gear box. And it’s paired with Gates’ CDX Belt Drive and titanium frame for ultra-low maintenance all around.
Pinion’s Smart.Shift debuted in 2022 for e-bikes, pulling power from their battery. Then in 2023, they launched this standalone unit with it’s own battery and Priority Cycles launched the first mountain bike with it that summer. This is the first drop bar bike to use it.
The system combines Pinion’s internally geared gearbox at the cranks with electronic shifting, overcoming the original’s drawback of requiring two cables running from the shifter, replacing them with a single wire.
It’s housed in a custom titanium shell, beautifully integrated into this frame’s design.
For drop bar bikes, it’s paired with TRP HyWire shifters and brakeset, which is a gamechanger for ergonomics compared to the mechanical twist shifter. Both brake hoses and the shift wires run internally through the frame, with a small charging port on the downtube.
Pilot is using the Pinion C-line model with 12-speeds and rapid 0.2-second shifts. It can shift under load or at a standstill. You can even program a “starting gear” that it’ll automatically return to when you come to a stop, making take-off easier and at just the right cadence.
The bike uses sliding dropouts to tension the belt drive, with a bolt-together frame brake on the driveside seatstay.
The completely sealed gearbox and maintenance-free belt drive makes it a perfect adventure bike, and it has triple bottle bosses on the seat tube and both sides of the downtube, giving you plenty of storage options…
…plus rack and fender mounts on the rear. Swap out the fork for something with Anything Cage mounts (or add Old Man Mountain’s new Axle Pack kit) and you’re ready for bikepacking.
It’ll be available as a frameset (€4,200) and complete bike (from €8,250) with the following spec:
- Wheelset: OHR G2 / G45
- Handlebar: Ritchey Venturemax
- Seatpost: Ritchey 2-Bolt
- Frame finish: Brushed Frame with Sandblasted Logos / custom logos
- Fork: Pilot Carbon Gravel
- Brakes and shifters: TRP HyWire
- Tires: Vredestein Aventura / Grezzo 38 / 44mm
- Wheels: OHR Cycling G2
