I want to know why...

[mickle]

... no one has ever designed a fixed/free bicycle transmission with a simple lever driven cable actuated clutch. The new SRAM Torpedo requires a dismount and seven turns of an Alen key ffs.

 

[TheDoctor]

I'm sure there was the fix/free drive a good few years back. IIRC it used a Sturmey Archer trigger to go from fix to free...

 

[mickle]

It didn't have a clutch tho, twas a pair of pins iirc.

 

[NickM]

Because they think that engaging fixed at high speed would be unsafe?

Yes, it would be daft, but somebody would do it...

 

[SimonC]

Why would want to drag all the extra weight around?

I thought one of the ideas of going singles speed, whether fixed or free, was simplicity of maintenance - now you are fitting a clutch??!!

 

[fossyant]

Why go single speed......TBH been bitten with fixed - you can't get up the hills with SS, you can (just) with fixed.

You can get down hills with fixed too - takes about a week's practice everyday....then it's natural..... even an old coot like me...

 

[Bigtwin]

Because there is a much better solution. Listen in.

Where the pedal bolt meets the crank arm, you have a grooved ring running right around, centered on the BB spindle. Like and extra chain ring essentially, but nothing to do with the chain.

Each pedal has a spring pin that links it to the crank arm. When withdrawn, the pedal is free to revolve around the grooved "track" - or rather, to stay stationary with the grooved track revolving with the cranks.

Pin back in - hey presto - next time the crank passes the pedal position it engages and off you go again.

What could be simpler?

 

[TheDoctor]

Why go single speed......TBH been bitten with fixed - you can't get up the hills with SS, you can (just) with fixed.

You can get down hills with fixed too - takes about a week's practice everyday....then it's natural..... even an old coot like me...

But there is no greater pleasure in life than freewheeling down a hill, surely?

 

[Gerry Attrick]

Now's your chance, Mickle me boy.

 

[simon_brooke]

A fortnight ago I had more or less made up my mind to buy myself a fixie. And then I went for a ride with a friend who rides a fixie all the time. He is Convinced. He Believes. And if you listen to him, he's very persuasive. Fixed, you think, is surely the only, the manly way to go.

And then you go for a ride with him....

See, where I live, there are these things called 'hills'. I like to ride up them. I don't like to walk up them. So the fixie project has gone right to the back of the queue. The purity and elegance of a fixie is all very well, but halfway up a 300 metre brae it doesn't buy you much.

 

[spiro]

Because they think that engaging fixed at high speed would be unsafe?

Yes, it would be daft, but somebody would do it...

Can't be any more stupid then the automatic Mercs that had a pedal to put the hand brake on were you would expect to find the clutch pedal on a manual.

 

[Hilldodger]

... no one has ever designed a fixed/free bicycle transmission with a simple lever driven cable actuated clutch. The new SRAM Torpedo requires a dismount and seven turns of an Alen key ffs.

Because everyone is waiting for you to do it

 

[NickM]

But there is no greater pleasure in life than freewheeling down a hill, surely?

Beer gets close