Multi-geared fixed gear?
 

Is this mechanically possible? If so, why has no one ever come up with such a concoction? Or has someone? Please don't flame me about being blasphemous, as I'm sure some of you think this would be... :o

Also, on a slight tangent, is it possible to put a coaster brake on a multi-geared machine? :p

Sturmey Archer made a fixed gear multi-speed hub. They are quite rare from what I understand.

Just put some super glue in your road hub....

i have a wheel from an old schwinn ten speed, i think it's mid seventies, anyway there's no free wheel in there, it's got like 5 different gears but there's no free wheel, there's some sort of free wheel type thing in the cranks, i've thought about tossing it on a geared bike that doesn't have the free wheel type cranks but i've never been not lazy enough to bother, maybe if the weather is as ****ty as they say tomorrow i'll work things out, i'll let you know how it goes

There are several 3 and 7 speed coaster hubs. Shimano Nexus models are the most common. They are internal planetary gears since a coaster brake won't work with any kind of springy tensioner or derailer.

i've got one of the s-a two-speed fixed hubs, there's a 25% difference between the two gears.

supposedly there's a way to modify a 3 speed s-a into a 2-speed fixed, but i've never heard of anyone actually doing it.

as for putting a coaster brake on a multi-geared bike, if you're talking about a deraileur/cassette setup, i don't think so.

might be possible on an internaly geared hub, anyone know? jim_v, you still around?

thanks lz4005

Thanks mattface, for the lead. Good ol' Sheldon Brown provided the details! http://www.sheldonbrown.com/asc.html

He's even got the drivetrain on the other side!

Yeah, they made those with the idea that if the chain kept spinning you could shift gears while coasting. Needless to say it didn't catch on. Too many pant-legs getting chewed up or something. Panzies.

Anyway, a fixed hub with the freewheel in the bottom bracket is currently the standard in single speed trials bikes.

Aaaand, thats all I got.

what's the advantage of that?

i just read something bout converting a SRAM internal 3 spd into a fixed. i cant remember where, though. it involved maching new bits, so i kind of forgot about it was it on sheldon? dunno......

someone should start making new 3 speed fixed hubs, i bet itd be a lucrative market

it was cool. you had to route the cable through a pulley on the downtube. and the reccomended shifter was this old sturney lever thing. man, i hope someone can find that page.

edit: this isnt what i was thinking of, but anyways http://www.sheldonbrown.com/awfixed.html

this what your thinking of?

WARNING: PDF link
http://fixedgeargallery.com/articles...amwebster1.pdf

BAM!!!!
thats the one. i thought it was pretty sweet. anyone up for trying it out?

So you just replace a freewheel instead of a freehub when you blow out the pawls.

But Echo now says you can't use their trials hub in a fixed gear setup. My guess is the splines screw into the hub body and will come loose with back pressure.

I guess Miche is the only splined setup on the market again.

i tried the sa 3 to 2speed fixed method, but was short on tooling, so i used jb weld, haha... the instuctions on-line say to do some cutting and fabricating, but i couldnt so i glued together the things that are supposed to be locked together. it works, but marginally. for some reason the glueing makes the hub spin in only one direction, while the correct method lets it spin both ways. this meant id have to run left hand drive and not roll the bike backwards. the cog also turns a few degrees each direction before power is transfered that way, so response sucked. it was fun though and the nuetral gear between high and low was sweet for those super fast wide open downhills!!

Its called positron. Like the other guy said, it didn't catch on.

As for trying out that setup, ever tried to ride a geared bike with a frozen freewheel?
Have fun.
You can coast for like two seconds while the derailleur gets pulled in ways it shouldn't. The bike doesn't force you to keep pedaling, but you have to anyway, just to avoid things getting fudged up.

I have a two speed fixed hub. $25 from an old guy + modification. It's cool and works pretty well, but I'm not using it now because I don't like cables/levers at all if I can help it. It would probably be very useful for fixed gear touring.

howd you mod it?

I hammered the Sturmey-Archer rep at Interbike about that. He said they're looking into it, but he told me to not hold my breath. He then asked why I thought they would sell. He said he really didn't understand the fixed-gear thing and thought that even though "they might be popular right now" that only a small amount of those who currently own a fixed-gear would opt in for multiple gears on their fixie. I guess that might be true, but how hard could it possibly be for a company that is already manufacturing multiple types of hubs to offer a 3 speed fixed?

I saw this originally, and thought it was interesting. I was able to get the Bendix hub described there from a guy who collects bike parts, and I proceeded to follow the directions on that site. Unfortunately, this didn't work too well. The epoxy failed at the bottom of a hill approaching a stoplight and I had to do a flying dismount to avoid hitting a car.

I took the hub apart and burned out all the epoxy with a torch. I used a dremel to make notches along the bottom of the component on the right in this picture in addition to the ones on the other component in the image. I also made numerous additional notches across the hub shell interior. I reassembled the hub and added the JB Weld, and then used a blowtorch from around two feet away to heat the epoxy and make it flow through all the notches I'd grinded.

This seems to have worked really well and there haven't been any problems despite skidding all the time.

Sure, in the long view, everything is a fad. The question is, will the fixed gear fad last long enough to justify tooling up to provide a multispeed hub? I think it will.

hells yeah. i like the multi speed fixed idea. it makes the thought of doing a fixie tour more bearable. although, on-the-road service for such a specialty hub would be tricky.

I don't know about the SA hubs, but the internal components of mine are about 20 times simpler than any derailleur system.

Also, if you are hopping up onto a rock or something, you land on the chain and you backpedal to get your crank in a different position for leverage for your next hop, a freewheel-in-hub setup would drag you backwards, whereas a freewheel-in-bb won't because the chain doesn't move when backpedaling.

That was what a trials guy told me once, at any rate.