Track bikes are designed for the track. Fixed gear bikes were designed for road and track use.

Al

I think you guys probably agree, but only if you drop the "and" from between traction & control. I'm a 1-finger brake proponent myself, I try to keep my brakes to as fine a tune as possible & believe that sparing only 1 finger from the bars helps my performance in control & braking, still I like the modulation available through my legs for slippery stuff, even if I ran a back brake on a fixed gear I'd feather with my legs. Locking up the rear too, in slippery stuff, is better for me with legs, you can use it to break through to better traction below.

Now you're backpedaling. If you assume that gearing is kept constant then obviously it doesn't affect anything. The question is what happens if gearing is not kept constant?

You only feel resistance in the pedals on a coastie if you are pedaling faster than the wheel (times the gear ratio). But you have no way of knowing whether or not you are doing this. For example, picture a coastie suspended in air, you pedal forward, but you don't feel any resistance. Is it because you aren't pedaling fast enough or because you don't have any traction? There is no way of telling.

Also, on a coastie you don't get any feedback when you just let the bike roll, whereas on a fixie if you let the bike roll then the pedals carry your legs, giving you feedback.

So those are three scenarios when you have better feedback on a fixie:
1. Pedaling backwards.
2. Not actively pedaling.
3. Pedaling slower than the wheel.

Have you ever studied control theory? This is exactly the same thing. Yes, with a freewheel you are free to continue pedaling forward just as if you were on a fixed gear. However, you have no way of knowing how fast the cranks would be turning if your gear were fixed. You lose that bit of information and so you can't interpret the resistance of the pedals as well as if you had that bit of information.

Obviously my whole argument is theoretical. It could be that none of this makes a significant difference. But the point is that there has to be a difference, even if it is insignificantly small.

Semantics. Then it improves "the ability to use traction". Which is more important? Traction that can't be used or traction that can be used?

Feedback makes all the difference though. A plane can't fly without feedback even though the physics are the same. Being able to predict what the machine is going to do in the next split second makes all the difference over whether you can direct the physics in your favor or whether the physics will simply whip you about.

If you can react to the physics then you can always stay one step ahead and control how the system will evolve, but the less feedback you have available the less you can react and you may not be able to stay one step ahead. For example, you may not be able to keep the system on the verge of kinetic friction.

It's like playing poker and being able to look at the other players cards. You still get the same cards regardless of whether or not you look at their cards. However, being able to look at their cards allows you to use what you have more effectively. You may even be better off with a worse hand as long as you get to know what the other players have.

No you just can't comprehend much.

I know you've never ridden a fixie before but have you even ridden a bike period**********

On a side note I feel to completely appreciate fixed gear riding you MUST have the right gear ratio for you. Pn my last fixie I had a gear ration way to small and I would inevitably ride fixed for a few days then get so sick of spinning out on downhills etc I would flip the hub to the freewheel. My latest build the gearing is a little high but there is no better feeling (on a bike) than perfectly smooth pedal strokes with matching acceleration (does that make sense? it does to me)

It's best to get a flip-flop, install both types of cogs and see which suits your style of riding best.

This is what I meant about using backpedaling to brake in general, and specifically in slippery conditions, but I don't think I summed it up that well.

I don't think even the most seasoned track racer or fixed gear fanatic could come even close to applying an even and moderated backpedaling force period, especially every single time one was going to brake, making this more critical when it's slippery. Not to mention the lateral forces that you're throwing in there with the pedaling motion that even the smoothest spinners will have.

Skidding is more like feedback on how you're not stopping as opposed to controlling your deceleration. The second your rear wheel slips at all, you have lost control of what you're doing. You might be able to regain it and even be really good at it, but in no way can this be better than brake modulation - where you don't ever have to get to the point of skidding or the rear wheel slipping.

Not to mention that using a braking force that's in front of your center of momentum has to be better than one behind it, but I can't explain the physics of that.

It is true that an iced over brake or rim will be a problem, but I run a disc brake in front. Before I did, I never experienced in years of riding in the winter a truly iced or snowed over in a place that has huge temperature fluctuations and large amounts of snow, but I have certainly experienced snow packing up between the tire and frame/fork to the degree that the brake wasn't completely usable. But I couldn't ride fast enough like that for that to put me in a critical situation, as the pounds of packed snow were working as brake already. Iced rims are probably most common in the northeast (biggest snowfall and temp fluctuations), and it happens so rarely it's like factoring tornadoes into your bike component choices, not to mention that by frequently feathering the brakes you can keep ice from forming on the braking surface at all, just like you have to when you ride in the rain, to make sure your pads always have a good grab.

There's also the fact that on most bikes more of the rider's weight is over the rear wheel, making it more difficult to deflect the rear wheel's momentum - I've only ever wiped out on ice because of the front, never from the rear, and I've had some pretty dramatic side to side rear slippage in hidden ruts, ice, etc. I think that will be the case of the illusion of backpedaling giving more control over the bike in the slippery stuff. It gives more feedback, maybe, but you give up control.

I'm just gonna leave the rest of this alone, but you obviously don't live in any kind of city to be able to say this. For city riding trackstanding is one of the most useful skills one can have on a fixed gear...

Practicalities for Transportation ...

Fixed:
Minimal, less parts, less to break.
Lighter. (w/o brakes)
Direct drive gives you a good sense of speed, control, power.
Not dependent on (possibly crappy) brakes.

Freewheel:
Coasting downhills
Easier to bunny hop
Toe overlap isn't an issue when cornering,
Safer in case you get your pant leg stuck in the chain ring.

Look, there's no need to be a dick and start hurling personal insults.

Do you feel resistance on the pedals when riding downhill in low gear on a coastie? Why not? That's right, because the wheels are moving faster than you are pedaling (times the gear ratio). That's how a freewheel works.

i think threads like this miss the point entirely. no one here has the expertise (as far as i have seen) to argue one is better than the other from a quantitative position. not to mention that the term better is not clearly defined and agreed upon. ultimately it is up to the rider with the understanding of the type of riding they do to determine what they want to get out of a bike and how that appies to bike choice. everything else is irrelevant. if you want to talk about inefficient trendy transportation devices, talk about skateboards... MOST INEFFICIENT BY FAR!!! but i wouldn't give up my experiences on one for the world, even i couldn't do tricks on it.

i would parallel this conversation to one about the foods you like to eat versus what it is most beneficial. it is a balance that is up to and intimately specific to each individual.

I can't imagine why - if you trackstand at an intersection, you look like you're either going or about to go to drivers crossing the intersection, making your behavior to them unpredictable, which it probably is, to them and to other bikers.

Trackstanding doesn't save time or make you faster, it's just fun and looks cool. Assuming you're at a dead stop, you can only accelerate as fast as you can accelerate, and the split second of repositioning yourself on the bike can hardly count as crucial. The vast majority of people I've seen trackstanding in Montreal or Philly are doing it badly and obviously learning, a new enthusiasm for bikes making it seem like a fun thing to do, which it is. Aside from the rare whoop, this guy is just going to breeze through the red for the hell of it, stop, stand, go, I can't imagine it's even remotely as useful skill as balance, smooth pedaling, or speed control.

If you take off the brakes, you are entirely dependent on brakes that are completely variable and unpredictable, as their performance depends on how much many calories you got that day or if your foot suddenly got itchy.

Fixed gears were actually designed so that you could build a bike without a humongous front wheel. Everything else you decide to do with it is up to you. On that note, many hill climbing time trialists in the UK have favoured a fixed gear somewhere in the 60's for courses with a consistent slope (many riding modified track bikes). I keep meaning to scan in this interesting magazine article and start a thread about this.

Ok I'm really starting to believe you either haven't ridden a bike before, don't understand english or get enjoyment from the most asinine arguments ever.


I said very specifically that WHEN PEDALING FORWARD you have just as much feedback. If the wheels are moving faster then you are pedaling then you are not going to be pedaling. Maybe pedaling for a second to keep your legs limber but otherwise you simply don't pedal in such situations. Maybe you haven't ridden a bike so you don't know this or maybe you just wanted to point out a ridiculous hole in my argument that has no practical significance. Which is it?

This is a guy who wants a super compact folder because he can't be bothered to cary his perfectly functional bicycle out of the basement to ride it. Not only are his priorities entirely alien to almost everyone on this forum, his opinions about cycling are entirely irrelevant to anyone who has ridden a bicycle more than a mile cumulatively in the last year.

Why argue with a non-cyclist about the merits of a freewheel over fixed. He doesn't know anything about bicycles he didn't learn sitting at his computer arguing with people on bike forums.

I almost never say this to anyone, but makeinu if you wanna know about the technical merits of freewheels over fixed gear, shut off your damn computer and ride your bike, THEN come back here and talk to us.

+million. Thread should've ended right there.

Did you read anything I wrote earlier? How will you know if the wheels are moving faster than you are pedaling or not? On a bike with a freewheel you don't know. That's my whole point. That is the feedback that a fixed gear gives you. It tells you how fast the wheel is moving.

You can't simply not pedal in such situations because there is no way to tell whether or not you are in such a situation. If you are pedaling and you aren't feeling resistance then it could either be that you aren't pedaling fast enough, or that you don't have any traction, but you can't tell the difference when using a freewheel.

This has nothing to do with english, bicycling experience, or whether or not something strikes you as asinine. It is simply a matter of physical fact. You can argue that this additional feedback isn't an important, but you can't argue that a freewheel gives the same feedback. That's the way a freewheel works. If you have something in your mind that doesn't work that way, then it isn't a freewheel. End of story.

So what? My priorities are more in line with the majority of the population. I know that they are alien to hardcore cyclists like you guys. That's why I ask specific questions, because if I just asked "what should I do?" or "which is better?" then I would get answers that would satisfy priorities completely different from my own.

Am I arguing with anyone about the merits of a freewheel over fixed? No. I'm arguing over the physics of a freewheel, which dutret doesn't seem to understand.

But I don't own a fixed gear.

This has everything to with cycling experience and asininity. If you didn't lack one of those completely and have copious quantities of the other you wouldn't be talking anymore.

Noone who has ridden a bike would claim that you couldn't feel the difference between spinning a tire and spinning the freewheel.

Seriously, what planet do you live on? Whatever planet it is, it must have less gravity than earth, thus causing you to experience things differently from earthlings. It is very obvious to me and to everyone else who knows how to ride a bike whether or not the racheting mechanism of the freewheel is engaged or not, regardless of whether you are going fast, slow, uphill, downhill...whatever. Are you trying to tell me that you can't feel the difference between freewheeling and your rear wheel sliding beneath you? Because they are dramatically different phenomena, even on something as slick as ice.

This is my final answer:
If you can't be bothered to ride the bike you already have because it is all the way in the basement you will have no interest in fixed gear. It will do nothing good for you, except give you yet another excuse not to ride your bike, and you clearly don't need any more excuses for that.

I don't know how you ride, but I'm only stopping at a light if I physically can't get through (ie, there's cars coming). If i did, i'd never get anywhere because new york has a light about every few hundred feet it seems. I pull up, trackstand, and as soon as I see a spot I shoot through. By the time you've unclipped your foot, put it down, and picked up the bike to spin the tire around, you've already missed a chance or two. Then when you do get on the bike your attention is partially on getting your foot in the clip when it should be totally on getting through the gap (not to mention your gap has shortened considerably due to the extra time it takes to get back up on the bike). That "split second of repositioning yourself on the bike" can mean the difference between making the light and waiting two minutes as a steady stream of cars go by (stop, look, Go! as opposed to stop, take foot out, spin wheel around, then look--**** there went my chance). Then, if you actually want to take advantage of the rest of your pedal stroke as you mentioned in your post, you have to reach down and tighten your straps again (again taking your focus off the road where it should be), only to pull out and do it all again 30 seconds later (and don't bring up clipless, it has been covered to death why a lot of us ride in street shoes). When riding in heavy traffic, getting ahead of the cars means less danger, whether it just be not having a car six inches from your elbow or being squeezed into the door zone--simple concept, no cars around you, less danger from cars. Therefore, making lights becomes pretty important, and yes that "split second" matters. Not to mention, beating a car through the intersection onto a narrow road is often the difference between taking the lane and getting squeezed...Anyway, not trying to be an ass or anything (although I know that's encouraged on bikeforums), that's just how I use it and I find I do wait at a lot less lights these days and I get off the line faster (time-wise, not speed-wise as you said). Just my experience...

Ahh, ok....if you say so.....

I've never ridden a bike in NYC, but I have done it in several other congested city centers. I don't ever ride my bike between traffic gaps whose windows can be measured only in one or two seconds, and I don't think that there's any reason to do it. I've seen the videos of the people riding without stopping in NYC, and I think it's pretty unreasonable to take this as a standard of how to ride a bike (or drive a car for that matter). One thing working as a courier taught me was that taking these risks to shave a second here or there didn't add up to saving any time in the end, because there were always the spots where you *had* to stop, *had* to dismount, etc - just like when I'm doing my rounds on Mt-Royal, and a yahoo who *has* to pass me on his sweet new Sledgehammer gets dropped another km uphill, when they've got lactic acid churning in their thighs, and I'm still spinning my gear in the saddle.

To me it's the cyclist equivalent of when drivers blow through a just-turned red really fast, blow a stop sign or turn against a signal because "it doesn't hurt anyone" or "I'm in a hurry" - privileging one's own rights/priorities at the expense of others. Not that I never blow lights or signs, but you never see me making something in traffic by a hair, like the dude barely getting around the bus in the video, because it's idiotic, and I don't take big risks with no payoff arbitrarily.

The point is not whether or not there are other nuances or nonidealities in the freewheel that transfer this difference back through the pedals. The point is that the nature of the freewheel, by it's very purpose, is to dampen such effects. On a perfect freewheel you would not be able to tell and you have have no feedback, while on a perfect fixed gear the feedback would be total and complete. Obviously nothing is perfect, so a real freewheel ends up somewhere in the middle, but it can't give the same amount of feedback as a fixed gear, otherwise it wouldn't be a freewheel.