Ok noob, so you've built or bought your first fix, and you're a little familiar with general bike mechanics, but this threaded cog and lockring stuff seems to be straightforward and yet has some kind of magic aspect to it. Should it be this hard to thread on? Which way does it go? How are you supposed to tighten the lockring anyway?

Ok, it's not that hard, but I just did something that I didn't think I should be doing, but because I had no experience to compare it to, I just kept doing it anyway, and now my almost new hub is trashed.

When I first built up my bike, I was so excited to just put it together and ride that I kind of rushed it. I tightened down my cog as much as possible with a chainwhip before I realized that I hadn't applied any grease to the threads. Aha, that's why it seemed gritty going on - threading bare steel on bare (soft) aluminum threads can't be fun if you're threaded metal. **** it, I just wanna ride. I threaded on the lockring and tightened it as much as I could with the stupid hinged lockring tool that came with my stupid $40 toolkit (a simple $40 lesson in why you should by tools for $20 each as you need them - at least I got $40 worth of use out of my chainwhip, cassette remover and crank wrench).

Then I read about the Rotafix method and thought it would be a great idea to do that, since I wasn't sure if my cog was really on there tight. But I'm afraid of tools, and so are my knuckles and fingers, and everything seems to be going ok... I'll grease those threads one day.

Then I read BostonFixed saying:

Seems like a good idea. So I did it. Sure enough, I could now tighten down my lockring.

Like a week later, I'm backpedaling suddenly and feel some cog slippage. A tiny bit, a 1/16 or 1/32 of a turn, but I felt it, but this was an emergency stop and whoops, brake some more and whoops, felt it again. Ok then, crank it up the hill, ride really gingerly the rest of the way home, and only use the front brake.

Here's where I should have just gotten over the fear of tools and threads and carefully removed the cog, greased the threads, Rotafixed it, and cranked that lockring on really tight.

But I didn't. I tightened the cog as best I could, tightened down the lockring even more, and rode. Not much in total, maybe a few hundred kms. Everything's going great right? I'm going up and down the mountain, I'm getting confidence and control going down hills, using the brake when necessary, but otherwise controlling my speed backpedaling as much as possible.

Then today gingerly rolling down a street, apply a very slight backpedal to slow down and let a friend catch up. At like 12 km/h, major slippage. a quarter turn? A half? It felt gritty. It didn't feel good. Do some cranking, brake with the brake for the rest of the way to the destination and back home again. Get that wheel off and start working on that cog.

It felt gritty. I'm not sure else how to describe it. It was a real fight to get the cog turning, and when it turned, it didn't feel "right". After about two turns, I thought of posting here and seeing if someone would reply quick, and maybe id the situation, and save me from doing something irreparable. I quickly decided against it, and just kept pulling on that sucker with the chain whip. All of a sudden half of the cog slipped laterally and...

You can guess the outcome. Toast. At the very least, I can continue to use this wheel with a freewheel or a suicide setup, but I just don't feel that hot about coasting with one gear (which I can do on another bike anyway, just not as stylishly, and with two brakes), and at my size and weight, I just don't want to deal with wondering when my suicide setup is going to give up the ghost. Sure, the Rotafixing Italians think only wusses ride with lockrings, but look at their splash page - I'm not 5'3" and 110 pounds.

What is the lesson here? Basically don't be an idiot. Hopefully, you don't have to learn this lesson, but I know a lot of newcomers to fixed get information from here, so maybe someone can learn from my mistakes, in addition to all of the "stripped my Suzue Jr" and "cog spinning on my Windsor" posts. Add to all of that: why did I not check my cog and lockring after riding 6 kms up the mountain at >90 rpms a dozen or so times this week? That would be a good time to see if your cog snugged on any more and you need to tighten your lockring, or if something's come loose (from going down the 6kms on dirt and avoiding dogs, joggers, bikers and hippies). If I'm really the only person in the world to make this mistake, then I'm extremely grateful that the world is a way better and smarter place than I thought it could possibly be.

Here's the scoop for all you new Pista owners, winners of ebay auctions for budget fixed wheels for conversions, and anyone who's impatient (read: stupid as me) enough to not sit down and do it right the first time:

1. Grease your threads.

2. Get that cog on there tight. I didn't have the chance to, but the science of http://204.73.203.34/fisso/eng/schpignone.htm seems to be entirely reasonable, except for the no lockring part. Your hub came with a lockring. Why not use it? 13 grams of threaded steel weighs more than what's left of your vegetarian burrito lunch stuck in your teeth.

3. When something seems to be wrong, attend to it right away.

4. Assuming my threads were already toast, I sure am glad that I had a front brake if I was dumb enough to get this far in the first place. I haven't seen a single fixer in Montreal with a handbrake yet. I hope that means they're all seasoned fixed riders and track racers from like DC or NYC or something.

5. Ride your bike. Lots.


I thought in retrospect, crisse, the first time you felt slippage, you should have rotafixed that sucker on so it would never move again. Then the angel on the other shoulder told me that if the slippage you felt before was actually stripping threads, not just slippage due to unsnug lockringness, and now there's more slippage, and you now have a weird feeling when you're trying to remove the cog, those threads were toast on the first slip. Now you destroyed it yourself, instead of trying to skid in an emergency stop and finding your cog spinning, and almost reaching the brake lever in time. Isn't it better to destroy your hub than your face?

Well, you haven't seen my face, but someone's probably happy about it anyway. Except for the devil who jumps back with, well then, are you so sure your threads were actually stripped? Maybe you just stripped them forcing your stuck cog impatiently, smart guy.

Sheesh.

If anyone cares to respond, especially the brakeless ones, have any of you heavier riders had any problems with stripping hubs more than the first time? Now I'm ready to bite the bullet and just get a Phil, but they're still made of aluminum, and aluminum is soft. Stripping a 150 buck Phil would surely send me to the loony bin. I really want to believe that this is my own insouciance, incompetence and idiocy that have left me with a smooth shiny surface where my cog threads should be. I'd consider the Level, but for two hundred bucks, it really looks like just a disk brake hub, and I might be more inclined to get one of those special cogs (is it Boone?) and a new axle and try that as an extracurricular activity instead. Maybe I should just call Nashbar and see if I can get it warrantied (!), that would be good for a laugh, especially if they sent me another hub.

Also, is it perfectly safe to use my (Soma) cog again, assuming I can get the aluminum doodles out of it? The threads look ok, but I've put all that stuff in the front room so I won't have to look at it until I come out this blind rage.

Bah. Apologies for the long post. I don't even have any friends that care about bikes, let alone understand the complexities of the fixed gear hub, though I'm sure lots of them can understand the complexities of being an idiot.