French Bike System Cuts Wheel Changes to 10 Seconds

Changing a bike's rear wheel has always been one of cycling's most annoying tasks, but a French company just solved a problem riders have wrestled with for decades.

Legend Wheels created the Dual system, which flips traditional bike design on its head by moving the cassette (the gear cluster) from the wheel onto the frame itself. This simple but clever change means the wheel can drop straight down without wrestling with chains or fiddling with gears.

The old way required shifting to the smallest gear, yanking out the axle, pulling back the derailleur, and pounding the wheel until it fell out. Putting it back meant reversing all those steps while manually threading the chain back onto the tiniest cog. Anyone who's tried this while rushing or in bad weather knows the frustration.

With Dual, the cassette stays put on the bike when you remove the wheel. The chain doesn't move, so there's no repositioning needed. The wheel simply drops down and clicks back in place in roughly 10 seconds.

The system takes less than a minute to install initially and requires no modifications to your bike frame. It works with bikes that have a 12 x 142mm thru axle and disc brakes, using Legend's proprietary R27 hub.

Competitive cyclists backed by support vehicles could benefit most, swapping between wheel types in seconds when terrain changes from road to gravel. But everyday riders will appreciate the simplicity too, whether fixing a flat or switching wheelsets for different conditions.

The Bright Side: Dual builds on earlier attempts to solve this same problem, including the Fasten system from 2021 and even the Cinelli Bivalent hub from the early 1960s. What makes this version work is that Legend refined the concept and actually brought it to market with compatible wheels and straightforward pricing.

The kit costs €349 (about $405), with the required R27 hub running €169.90 ($197). Legend also sells prebuilt wheels with the R27 hub that work with 9, 10, 11, and 12-speed Shimano and SRAM cassettes, making the system accessible to most modern road and gravel bikes.

Sometimes the best innovations aren't completely new ideas but taking old concepts and finally making them work for everyone.