Originally Posted by
treebound
The World Tourist has that old freewheeling crankset on it with the fixed rear cluster.
If anyone is thinking ... ooh -- cheap fixed gear wheel ... this won't work for that.
From a 1/24/06 post to the Bicycle Restoration YahooGroup, the late Sheldon Brown explained it this way:
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Steve Birmingham wrote:
>One of my someday projects is to make a 5 speed fixed gear using the
>gear cluster from one of these setups
Nope, won't work. Those clusters weren't "fixed" they were just
stiff freewheels. This was a safety feature. If you were to catch a
trouser leg, shoelace or appendage in the moving drivetrain, the
stiff freewheel would slip, avoiding seriously nasty results.
Sheldon "OK In Theory, Not In Practice" Brown
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Shimano called them "friction freewheels".
Bob