"Anti spin" cranksets - do they exist ?

[Van Nick]

Last week, whilst out on my bike, my chain suddenly jumped out of gear and came off and the resistance against which I was pedalling was suddenly no longer there.

The result was that I came off, hitting the middle of the lane (with cars behind), sustaining bruised ribs, and skinned right shoulder, elbow and knee.

It was all very painful, but it could have been a whole lot worse.

By pure coincidence, our local post girl was telling me that exactly the same thing had recently happened to her whilst out on her round and she showed me the stitches around her eye.

This got me wondering if there is a crankset on the market, that does not spin if a gear slips, the chain breaks or comes off for some reason whenever the resistence suddenly stops.

Maybe it could work on some sort of ratchet system.

I'd be interested in any thoughts that people might have.

 

[vernon]

To the best of my knowledge, there isn't such a device. I don't think that I'd want one as the consequences of it failing and locking on are just as bad as those of a chain slip.

 

[Night Train]

I suppose you could have a centrifugal drum brake so if the spin exceeds a certain rate it introduces drag.

 

[Tim Bennet.]

I think you would be better off working out why your bike throws its chain. There are things like chain keepers and Dog Fangs that might help a specific problem.

 

[Steve Austin]

My shins would look a lot better if something like this had been invented when i was BMXing.


I can think of several BB's that have seized solid stopping cranks spin freely, but unfortunately this never coincided with a chain snapping