Originally Posted by
Andrew R Stewart
Glad that you have a possible solution. However I'll add comments boardering on the cynical. One issue with fixed gears and how they are used these days is that few riders also use a brake. Back when the whole currier thing was starting (at least for where I was living and owning a LBS) a number of messengers went to fixed set ups and removed their brakes. Most who did this got pretty cheap hubs and lock rings and really didn't know how to maintain them,. or much else about their bikes sometimes. We saw a number (for how many were in use in the early 1990s in Cleveland) that stripped the ring's threads on the hub. My opinion then was that while the original intended use of an alloy hubbed fixed gear was for track racing, where if one had to slow/stop quickly one lost the race. Yet they were skid stopping many times a day. Add to this the then lack of maintaining the lockring's tightness meant that the cog would unthread and retighten frequently. The cog's thread shoulder stopped the cog's movement on tightening with the far less strong lockring's threads taking the toll of those stop forces (which are higher then the accelerations can ever be), Thus the hub's ring threads soon enough wore down and/or the ring skipped threads. Of course this hindered future keeping a routinely visited ring from staying put. We replaced a number of those cheap hubs, back then a wheel rebuild.
These days it seems that some of this is less then earlier. More seem to know about proper maintenance and I don't see the skid stopping as common as I used to. Likely because I now live in a city with no real currier activity and fixed bikes are more for general getting around then working as fast as one can to max pay. Still I strongly suggest a proper wheel brake or brakes be used on the road with a fixed cog. If for no other reason that stopping with the front brake can save you a lot of grief and should an incident (not sure I would call a conscious choice to flaunt the law to be an accident) ever go to court the lack of a brake in many states can be a reason to dismiss an injury claim. Andy
Hey Andy, you have some good points there. At one point, I too fell into that once fell into that thinking, that front brakes are not cool, that the messenger mentality of riding as fast as you can without slowing down was the way to do things. No I always wear a helmet and a front brake on my fixed gears.
I am wondering, as you point out, when this mentality change? Do you think it's more that people are more aware of their own safety (to themselves and others)? Or do you think that the nature of courier business has changed, thus affecting the attitudes of fixed gear riders? (This is sounding like a academic essay now, which I may one day research
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