Ha, missed the train and answered the wrong question. My failures were all impact related. The spur gear is pom and the pinyon is steel. Impact from high deceleration (free spin in air to impacting the far side of the cut at about 25-30). Caused the pom secondary gears to shear.
Crash had the steel secondary gear and a similar failure mode but the damage was shifted to the pom spur gear. 30ish mph impact to full stop under throttle
Both of those last two sound like the outcome would have been the same or extremely similar with steel gears, except the transmission wouldn’t be broken afterward, and in the first case, you might still have brakes after the far side of the cut. ?
Or something else would have failed. Im happy with the performance but understand the drawbacks. I also spend thousands of miles with a lower volume dive noise which i appreciate. It also a cheap part so i have spares. Also have better rolling resistance and efficiency than comparable drives. It’s a give and take and the point of failure isn’t the only advantage/disadvantage. It’s also still in production and parts ship when i order them. Namics drives are unsupported and so are most of the steel steel drives. All the little things have added up to me being satisfied with the product
This is how I feel about belts 
That’s the distance I usually ride in a week. Unfortunately, I have pretty high demands on these products since I ride a lot. 
But I’ll keep this in mind in case I need more parts. I also saw that they are printing in tool steel now—that might actually withstand my needs.
Printing in Maraging steel would definitely be a better choice and the cost difference isn’t much. I went with 316L just to see how they would hold up. Pretty much none of these miles are street. The drives are low profile and hug tight to the hubs, but have still bashed into plenty of rocks and survived other drops and impacts that would have broken POM gears (at least the ones I used to use.) 400 miles a week is impressive, but there’s no way my legs would survive mountain boarding 400 miles in one week. Not all miles are created equally 
I’ve had Newbee’s last stock of 11/38 POM gear drives for 2 years now. barely baby the thing, 100km rides, BMX tracks, high torque build, and the drives have lasted daily commute riding for their lifetime. Not sure if there are just inconsistencies in different batches made, or if some riders abuse them a bit harder than some.
mod 1.5 gear got shredded. the motor bearings exploded and so the motor shaft was floating. at slow speed it sounded awful but past 20 it would go quiet
I wouldn’t have have understood this comment before I drove 3 hours to Chicago last year to ride the lakeshore trail and the three “new” belts I had (two mounted and a spare) were actually very old stock that all failed within the first few miles.
I really wanted to use closed newbee drives on my last build, Snappy Bro, but I had a bunch of issues as well.
If chains don’t work out for ya I’d recommend jumping into some open gear drives from stooge. Simple, affordable, strong and tons of ratios available compared to most enclosed drives. Just loud and somewhat dirty but the sound is a great way for people to hear ya coming.
I think open gears are too loud for just cruising around. Super loud if you don’t grease, still really loud if you grease and then messy too. They are as reliable as it gets I can’t take that away. Running sendcutsend laser cut mod 1.5 open gears on my raceboard now.
For cruising I like the boardnamics straight cuts. Enclosed and fairly reliable. They have a cool sound but it’s not so loud that it quickly becomes bothering on a long ride.
Think it’s worth splitting out all this “belts and gear drives pros / cons” stuff into it’s own topic?
We basically coopted @Mikes_Esk8 thread.
Sound doesn’t bother me (I like it) and I much prefer people hearing me on bike paths etc. without having to do the “coming up behind you” yell. They literally look back and see me when I’m about 30 feet or so behind them, plenty of time to recognize I’m coming. Only time it kinda bugs me is if a few of us are riding them and trying to talk to one another, but honestly the full face helmets are a bigger hindrance to that than the sound of the gears imo.
Since we’re here for a second and gone I don’t think they’re that annoying to people either. Now if you just sit in front of their house going up and down the street all day sure.
It’s the old ‘loud pipes save lives” discussion I guess.
Quiet boards are great too, kinda like cars. Some sound awesome with the right exhaust and others just don’t have the right engine to make an exhaust sound good.
If the OP is cool with the sound I think it’s a solid option for him.
To me it’s not really about the decibels, but the quality of the sound itself. If it’s not ear piercing I don’t care if it’s loud.
Stooge gears are Mod1.5 and they are quite loud for most people. But Mod1 gears like BN and Poast’s drive sounds smoother and quieter.
Which is why I’ve been stubborn on my decision to stick with mod1 for my open source drives
For solo rides in a moto helmet I am fine with it, in a half shell open gears do get annoying to me though. My main gripe is when doing chill rides with other people it makes it pretty much impossible to talk over the gears even at walking speed.
Also in the US it’s completely legal to ride but in many places in Europe it’s more like a gray zone so I prefer to stick to more reasonable noise levels for less attention. The boardnamics drives are loud enough that people hear if I am coming, but they don’t turn their heads when I am still 100 meter away. Also they just sound so much smoother due to properly greased teeth and smaller modulus