Welcome!
Thank you for your purchase of a Viral Bike and welcome to the family. We realize that buying a bike is a very personal thing, and we truly appreciate you taking a chance with Viral. We want to make sure that your experience with our brand is nothing short of extraordinary.
Here you should find all of the information you need to care of your Viral frame and your Pinion Gearbox. If something is missing from this section that you have a question about, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask. We’re here for you!
Firstly, we would love it if you joined our community over on Strava. Here you can interact with other Viral Owners, compete for a top spot on the leader boards, and see what kind of amazing routes other Viral riders are going on. Sometimes they’re in your backyard, and sometimes they are crossing continents!
Belt Basics
Your Viral Bike ships with a top of the line Gates CarbonDrive CDX belt. This belt is NEARLY indestructible, but does require some special handling. Please see the chart to the right to see ways in which NOT to handle your belt, especially if you’re carrying an extra for a middle of nowhere bikepacking expedition. You’ll want to pack your belt away in a place that doesn’t allow the belt to do any of these actions.
Below is a link to the Gates handling and tension information. This will also have another link to download the Gates belt app, where you can use your phone to check the tension of your Gates belt. Here you’ll see a range of belt tensions that work with the Pinion gearbox (45 -65 hz). We recommend getting as close to 45hz as possible. The lower the tension, the better the wear on ALL of your components, including rear hub bearings.
Gearbox Basics
The Pinion gearbox is an exceptional piece of technology and one of its main benefits is requiring almost no maintenance… almost.
The Pinion C-Line gearbox we spec with every single Viral bike comes with a 2 year warranty against manufacture defects. This warranty can be extended to 3 years if you register your gearbox with Pinion: https://pinion.eu/en/account/?customer_login
If you are using the Smart.Shift, you will need to download the Pinion Smart.Shift app from the iOS or Android store. This app allows you to check your Smart.Shift battery life and switch the button assignments around to suit your needs. Some of the options in the Smart.Shift app, such as Start.Select and Pre.Select require a speed sensor, which we do not spec with our bikes currently.
Pinion now says that the service interval for the gearbox is every 6,000 miles, no matter how long it takes to reach that mark. We used to supply the first oil change with our bikes, but because of this new service interval, it could be years before your first oil change. As such we do not want to have oil sitting around your home for years. It’s probably best to create your Viral as a ‘bicycle’ on your mileage app (Strava, Garmin, etc) to help keep track of the necessary oil change interval. If you have multiple bikes, it does mean being vigilant about making sure you’re tracking the correct miles on the correct bike. The below video will show you exactly how to perform an oil change on the C-Line gearbox.
