Ochain B1 Gen2 reviewed on Santa Cruz Nomad V7

When I think about what makes a bicycle, I get stuck on how much science is involved. It’s supposed to be simple: turn the cranks, and the rear wheel moves. You climb the mountain, ride down a trail that feels almost magical, and do it again. At its core, the mechanics are straightforward.

But then things get complicated. Add an articulating rear triangle, start talking about leverage curves, bolt on a shock, and suddenly it turns into something far less intuitive. For the rider, it can feel like a guessing game—how is this bike that looks so good actually going to ride?

It’s hard to blame bike companies for leaning on catchphrases, clever or otherwise, to pull people in. Behind those phrases are smart designers making deliberate decisions about how suspension reacts to both trail and rider inputs. And every decision involves compromise: what makes the bike pedal and corner better might hurt performance when it gets rough, fast and or steep, and vice versa. Sometimes they nail it, sometimes they miss, or at least they nail or miss it for an individual rider. And in that gap—between expectation and reality—new ideas take hold.

That, I think, is where the Ochain concept came from.

What is Ochain?

Ochain is a chainring spider designed to add some slack between your cranks and chain. Depending on the Ochain model you choose, you can have it externally or internally adjustable.

There are four models to choose from, depending on your application and preference.

• Ochain N
• Ochain R
• Ochain E
• Ochain S

If you want to mount Ochain on your Shimano, Hope, E13 or other cranks, you are out of luck, now that SRAM has purchased the company. These only fit on SRAM cranks. Not all is lost, however, since the chainring is still a 104BCD, you can choose an aftermarket option to run Shimano chains on SRAM cranks.

Ochain R and S

These are the fancy options for the gen. 2 Ochain. The R for pedal bikes and S for the eMTB crowd. These options have externally adjustable degrees of movement for the damper mechanism. This adjustment determines how uncoupled you want your cranks to feel from your rear wheel. Do you want to chase Aaron Gwin’s 2015 Leogang performance? Or do you want something that preserves some chain tension? SRAM has a handy little chart for the use scenarios for each setting of the new Ochain.

• 0° Lock position for back-to-back comparisons.
• 3° XC/Trail Smooth, hardpack trails. Flowy compressions. Limited braking bumps.
• 6° Trail/Enduro Medium rough trails. Some rocks and roots. Some braking bumps.
• 9° Enduro/Bike Park/DH Rough trails. Rocky and rooty. Consistent braking bumps.
• 12° Bike Parks/DH Extremely rough, loose trails. Largest compressions, where damage risk to wheels/tires is present.

Adjusting the new Ochain R and S is quite simple. This is done best with both wheels on the ground, leaning over the bike from the non-drive side.

1. Apply forward pressure on the cranks with your left hand
2. Pull the external adjusted dial out slightly
3. Rotate while applying pressure to the cranks
4. When you decide on your desired setting, let the spring on the dial lock pull back
5. Release pedal pressure

Ochain N and E

There are also internally adjustable versions of the new Ochain. These lower-priced options are great for set-and-forget situations where the preset 9° of movement is sufficient for most situations. If you desire to change that setting to any of the others, you can purchase travel chips separately. I can see this being the more popular option for gravity riders hoping for a more faff-free experience and consistent suspension performance.

Ochain B1 Service Kits

There are two Ochain service kits, depending on the amount of abuse you’ve put them through. They are most likely to contain more parts than you require. The new Ochain is supposed to be better weather-sealed and require less maintenance than before. Time will tell how this claim stands, as I plan to abuse this sample all summer long.

11.6118.083.000 Ochain R S N E Adjustable – 0°, 3°, 6°, 9°, 12°

AM Ochain Full Service Kit (200 hour)

Gaskets, seals, springs, 8 balls, washers, m4 torx screws, and elastomers 9 degree.

11.6118.083.005 Ochain R S N E 6° 9° 12°

Ochain Elastomer Kit for R, S, N, E (100 hour)

4 elastomers

Upgrading your Ochain

The upgrade kits will convert your internally adjustable Ochain N and E to the levels of R and S. I know these letters don’t mean much out here on their own but just remember. R and S are externally adjustable and N and E are NOT. They do share many parts in their construction.

11.6118.083.003 Ochain Upgrade Kit N to R

External Travel Adjust knob, Rack, steel insert, spring, washer, bolts and outboard plate.

11.6118.083.004 Ochain Upgrade Kit E to S

External Travel Adjust knob, Rack, steel insert, spring, washer, bolts and outboard plate.

Currently, the smallest chainring you can get from SRAM for the Ochain is the 32t Xsync. I have not confirmed if a 30t Wolftooth or NSB will fit yet, but I plan to do that once I have the opportunity. My Ochain sample arrived late last week, and I have not yet been able to gather other parts .

Installation was quite simple. The bike of choice is the Santa Cruz Nomad V7 for a variety of reasons. First of all, it is the only bike in the house with a SRAM 8-bolt chainring interface. If a SRAM 3-bolt option was sent, I would have tried it on the Scor 2030. I plan to move these cranks to that bike for short-travel testing, which is where I feel I will have more interesting results.

The Ochain spider natively has a 3mm offset This is the most common offset for boost spacing 55mm chainline bikes. For 56.5mm chainline Downhill bikes with 83mm crank spindles, additional 3mm spacers and longer bolts are provided. These bolts and longer spacers are also required if you want to use the T-Type Bashguards which I’m not using.

Installation

Once the cranks are off the bike, undo 8 or 3 bolts, depending on your cranks and install the Ochain spider in the only orientation it will go. You can’t really mess this up, but if you do, congrats, go back to the beginning and try again. If you install the spider to the crank first, it may be easier to install the chainring to the spider as the crank arm lies flat on the edge of the table. I did not do this, but I have been installing chainring bolts on cranks for decades now. Thanks for reminding me how much I hate it, Ochain. The Nomad also comes stock with a 32t chainring, so I had to do zero faffing on this install. It was as easy as it gets. Once everything was on the bike, including the cranks, I went for a spin.

Oh, also, since the Nomad comes with DTSwiss 350 DEG DF hubs, I immediately set them to the locked position to eliminate that variable. Down the road, I will do some back-to-back testing to see how Hub-based systems compare to Ochain. It seems to me we need to solve the problem at the source. Pedal kickback happens at the pedals, not the cassette. Fight me!

The First Few Rides

I set the Ochain to 6 degrees of engagement and went for a ride. The new Nomad likes to pedal. This means it is a high anti-squat bike, so I figured it would be a good platform to test Ochain. I was not wrong. In a 6-degree setting, the Ochain’s function is impossible to feel through your feet on the climbs. The progressive engagement of the elastomers feels smoother than the metal-on-metal engagement of hub-based systems.

However, ratcheting on tech climbs feels more natural than a hub set to 12 degrees of freeplay. You can also fully lock the Ochain in 10 seconds for your climbing portion of the ride. Once at the top, set it to the desired degree of slack and have fun. This really got me wondering if there is an electromagnetically adjustable AXS version in the works. Maybe the flight attendant version is on the way?

On the descent, I didn’t immediately feel the benefits of the system. I rode some steep trails, some flowy ones. On Pingu trail on Mount Seymour, I realized the 12-degree setting made the bike too sluggish out of corners. I felt like I couldn’t pump and accelerate the bike as I should be able to. This was not a back-to-back, but what my leg dyno told me.

I then headed towards Ned’s to see how the rough, fast DH trail would be with various settings. I started at 12 degrees and stopped to reduce the slack by a click every few hundred meters. Once I got to the locked setting, I felt like my suspension was not working properly. I immediately stopped to set it to 9 degrees again, and all was good in the world.

I am new to the drivetrain decoupling game, so I’ve got some work to do. So far, I am impressed by the performance increase on the Santa Cruz Nomad. It is a long-travel trail bike, and the Ochain makes it feel like there is more travel when the trails get rough and fast. I imagine there are some suspension designs where the effects of the Ochain will be less noticeable. I am hoping to ride the short-travel Scor with the Ochain for the next few rides and see how that transforms the fast, spritely bike.

The million-dollar question is the price, of course.

I will post the price list for all the versions and spare parts for the system. But to simplify it,

The Ochain R and S are 350 USD // 380 EUR // 475 CAD

The Ochain N and E are 285 USD // 310 EUR // 385 CAD

The chainrigs are extra, and the upgrade kits are 90 USD // 100 EUR // 120 CAD