navigating turns on a fixie
 

i have a question for all you fixie users...
when you have to make a sudden and sharp turn, and your crank arm is down, what happens when i hits the pavement and your going 45 kph???? i know its a completely crazy hypothetical situation but its the only thing that has prevented me from buying a fixed gear bike...i love their look, feel on the road, and simplicity...but that part really bugs me because i constantly make turns where i have to naturally raise my crank arm to prevent it from impacting with the road and causing hell for me...

i courier and i asked a few dudes in toronto about this and most of them said they are careful and some said outright that they whipe out hahahah...

anyway, i also saw a few goons without ANY breaks whatsoever accept their leg power...I really dont see how they survive as in downtown toronto, as with all major cities, you have to stop instantly sometime and all the leg power in the world is not going to save you....especially if your only breaking your rear wheel on a wet day....

anyways, please inform my ignorant mind with your angry opinions...

your all crazy you fixies

huzzah!
its another torontonian!
anyways, thats why we generally run 165mm crank arms to avoid pedal strike on sharp turns. also some frames try to remedy it by placing the BB higher.

and as for no breaks, check this site out.
http://www.oldskooltrack.com/files/home.frame.html

oh, yea i use a 165 as well, and i still get cliped sometimes on really sharp turns when im not fast enough to create the proper clearance...


yea ive been reading stuff on this forum a bit, good to see so many toronto goons! peace

If you search this fg/ss forum for "skidding" "skipping" and "pedal strike" you'll find some discussion about these topics. Those are the terms used for the situations you were describing.

PS - fixed is fun don't let it scare you! :)

I ride at boring speeds, take turns slowly, and run a brake. My only experiences with pedal strike have been with curbs and trying to squeeze by cars at low speed.

As far as the wet weather thing goes, the same things apply. If you ride like a lunatic in wet weather you're eventually going to bite it, no matter what you're riding.

Its amazing how far you bank into a turn before you ground out.... and it is scary. And there are also technques to keep the bike as up right as possible while cranking thru a turn.

counter-steer, like on a motorcycle

lol, welcome to ss/fg, enjoy your stay

elaboration, please. Thank you.

Also, this is somewhat related, I still have trouble making little itty bitty circles. I never seem to keep it up without almost (or actually) falling over. Never seemed so hard on a freewheel bike.

On old school track they talk about the "instaturn", but I guess that's more if you need to make a sudden right or left turn, like if a car were to start to cut you off.

Also, you can be banking in a turn, and standing up on the bike, raise the bike more vertically without really moving your body, doing this each time the inside crank is descending.

The main technique is to slow down before turning :-). Like the others mentioned, shorter crank arms are good. I pedal strike on occasion but I've never fallen from one (yet).

Brakeless isn't hard. I'm an old guy with bad knees and I don't have problems skipping and skidding. You really learn to look ahead and use momentum to your advantage when riding fixed.

counter-steering means lots of things and we have had rediculous debates on here as to what the proper meaning is and whether or not countersteering should just be called steering and blah, blah, blah but before that starts, one trick (which may or may not be considered countersteering) is to not keep your body mass centered over the bike in a turn, but instead use it as a tool to allow you to change the angle your bike leans at.

i.e.: if you need to make a sharp right turn, place most of your body mass on the right side of the bike and turn the handlebars while keeping the bike relatively upright rather than leaning the entire system.

Thats how I do it

This is how I take turns, but imagine a bike.

http://www.driftsession.com/gallerie...rxldesktop.jpg

word. if you're using 165 cranks and low profile pedals (like the mks rx-1), you've gotta be pretty far over before you hit ground.

as an exercise, hold your bike and position the cranks so one is pointing straight down. lean the bike over and see where the pedal actually strikes ground. it's a pretty steep angle.

with your door open?

in front of houses built on piles of trash?

a one woman wearing orange construction vest watching from the bleachers?

Basically on a motorcycle if your going more than 20 mph you don't turn the handlebars the direction you want to go. I know it seems counter intuitive but it actually works. If you want to make a right hand turn, you lean over the right side of the bike, and push the bars left. This basically drives the bike out from underneath you and banks you into a right hand turn. Instead of trying to swing your mass over the top of the motorcycle, your drive the motorcycle out from underneath you to initiate the correct turn. I don't know how this would help on a bicycle though, because you still lean over on a motorycle while countersteering, countersteering just helps you get into the turn quicker.

forget njs,
its JDM style!
man, i've seen signal's twin 240's and they are HOT.

yeah surpa > *

my goodfriend has a 500+whp supra i cant describe it, imagine a jet that stays on the ground, sounds the same + 100x more in your seat.

All turns on bikes are done this way, too. That's one of the definitions of countersteering...where you actually have to initiate a turn by pushing the hbars the wrong way.* This is why it's often difficult to steer away from a wall or curb, because you initially have to steer into it to turn away. The method of moving weight around also requires a brief turn in the 'wrong' direction (for any experienced biker this happens automatically) but by moving body mass over, the bike can stay more upright through the turn, that's all.

*this is also why I don't think training wheels should be used to teach kids how to ride. They don't learn anything about steering w/ three contact points on the ground.

i was a messenger (courier in Canada) in Toronto back in the day. what company you work for?