Re: Fixed Gear (Fixie) vs Single Speed Gearing

I've considered removing the pawl springs on the freewheel of a bike
to see what happens. I liked the concept of fixed gear bikes, but with
the hills here that's just not possible to pick a single gear and
still be able to ride on flat roads. It would be neat to have a bike
with all the gears, but still be able to control non-major speed
adjustments just by changing cadence. For my racing and commuter
bikes, this could theoretically work even on hills since I'm still
pedaling at 30mph. Ultimately a type of clutch might be ideal so that
I could choose whether or not to be freewheeling, but I'm not sure
that currently exists.

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Win Allred <winallred-/[email protected]> wrote:
> At age 74, I grew up in the era where very few people rode "racing bikes", defined as mostly 3 speed Sturmey Archer hubs and hand brakes or very rarely a derailleur geared bike all of which were able to coast and had brakes of some sort.  A Fixed Gear by defination does not provide for coasting and many do not have brakes installed, you slow them by exerting counter pedaling effort.  I damn near killed myself trying to ride a Fixie a few years ago with some of my racing buds.  I will say I was fairly warned but my ego got in the way of my common sense!