hey, i'm new here, but i've been riding a fixed gear for a few years now. i don't know much about bike mechanics, but i'm trying to learn b/c i'm sick of people doing half-assed repairs on my bike.
i'm sure i'll have way more questions than this as i learn, but here are a couple:

1) i had my bike worked on recently and now it's unbalanced. i used to be able to ride no handed with almost no effort, now i have to compensate for my bike's imbalance with my body while i ride, which is really annoying. what could cause this?

2) i was looking at the fixed gear gallery site and i notice a lot of people have these things on their dropouts that look like they help set the back wheel/pull the chain tight. i'd love to get a set of these, b/c setting my back wheel has been a sort of voodoo practice for me, and i want it to be more precise. what are those called?

thanks for your help,
-et-

1) I had that sort of feeling once when my rear axle was bent. That was on a road bike and im sure its pretty hard to bend a solid axle but maybe that? Is your rear wheel out of plane with your front wheel?

2) Chain Tensioners. MKS makes a nice simple one that can be found on ebay easy.

usually means your forks are bent

I wanna second his first question.
I have a motobecane conversion that I cannot ride no handed on either. As soon as I take my hands off the bike collapses to the right.
The fork is brand new and the wheels are my old stock pista wheels. Now I could ride flawlessly no handed on my pista with those wheels so I assume they are fine, and the fork is new so that shouldn't be an issue, so is it most likely just the frame?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I've heard this can be caused by worn out headset or mis-adjusted headset.

My MTB does it but i haven't tried to fix it

yeah, it has a new headset too.
i'd say maybe it was misadjusted, but I couldn't ride it no handed before the new fork, headset and wheels either so whatever is causing the problem is still in existance.

stupid question in response: are you sure your back wheel is in the dropouts straight?

yeah, rear wheel is straight in the drops as is the front.

i guess the frame just must be bent or misalligned somewhere?

i apologize to the original poster, i didn't really mean to completely hijack your thread. hopefully my situation is similar to yours and the responses have been helpful.

no problem. this has been helpful, and i think i may know what my problem is. now if i could only locate my allen wrenches...

i still have a question about the chain tensioners. the bmx ones only work for tack ends right? well, what works for forward facing horiz dropouts? i have the threadings for the bolts that go through the back of the dropouts, but no bolts. even if i did, they push the wheel forward... i'm looking for something to help pull it back.

any suggestions?

thanks,
-et-

its prolly the headset--if you took your bike into a shop and it came out with a bent fork, um, don't go back to that bike shop.

does your fork spin freely? does it wobble? can you feel friction? If the latter, it's too tight, and the bearings will brinnel (read: get f&cked up) if left that way.

BTW: the good folks in the bicycle mechanics forum are quite equipped to answer questions such as these.

are you sure the underpaid kids at the bike shop weren't trying bmx tricks on your bike?

I've had the same thing happen (not bike abuse, but tracking issues). Often it's frame alignment, but it could be the wheel alignment. Also check your seat.

my friend and i went riding tonight and we traded bikes to see if my bike was messed up or if I was just crazy.
Turns out he could ride no handed on it, albeit with a little fighting, so we concluded that it must be a weight issue since my motobecane is so much heavier than my pista. Does that make sense? Being used to riding no handed on a lighter bike than having problems doing so on a heaivier one?
I guess, the problem lies within me and I just have to keep at it.