NUGE!

Stop talking about me.

Talk about bikes.

hey dan nugent! i'm coming to new haven for the wharf rat race, but myself and a few others from the city are showing up the night before. I'm gonna pick up some drinky drinks to bring down with us, and i was just wondering if there's anything i can pick up for you.

we should high five and then ride bikes.

i love laguna beach
i love the hills
i love fake reality tv drama, especially on mtv
i love bike forums

I don't know squat, but this guy seems to: http://peterwhitecycles.com/fixed.asp

why do you insist that people won't feel the difference? can you feel the difference?

I can't.

I'm riding on noodles right now and they feel fine to me.

unfortunately he doesn't.

Guess anything that will keep a cog on well and is of decent quality. Conversly , I assume a hub with reverse threaded lockring threads is called a track hub, but a Level hub would work too for riding fixed. I think freewheel road hubs with bb lockring and loctite are less ideal unless you run with handbrakes. I think you know what I mean. I would spend money on a rear track hub first when going fixed and all else could be road components.

I will feel the 5mm differnce betw. 165 to 170 cranks on my bicycle in a blind test. I bet my cranks on it.

Attributed to Peter White by dutret:

"A track bike has no rear derailleur. And if the chain is loose in some points in the crank's rotation, the crank will rock fore and aft, and a track sprinter will not have full control of the bike while jockeying for position in the sprinting events."

This makes sense to me if I make two separate statements out of it.

First:

"A track bike has no rear derailleur."

Second:

"And if the chain is loose in some points in the crank's rotation, the crank will rock fore and aft, and a track sprinter will not have full control of the bike while jockeying for position in the sprinting events."

I sense a tremendous amount of control through the pedals.
The pedals don't just accelerate and decelerate the bike: they also move it sideways and up and down; as well as positioning the rider in relation to the bike and the ground.
The tighter the chain, the more precise the crank, and the more precise, natural and immediate the control.

I think some people ride a fixed gear bike like they do a conventional bike, and think of it and relate to it like a conventional bike that doesn't coast.
The pedals add enormously to the agility of a fixed gear bike, but only if the rider uses them.

I write from work and need to attend to business.

I'll pick this up later.

The RD and the 75 are much different. I have both. Under the spider of the RD, it is more hallow, and has just a nasty cast, and nasty grinder lines. The 75 is smooth soild steel front and back, no casting lines, no rough grinder edges. The RD, while a good crank, it feels flimsy next to the 75.

I'm sure they are different (I would hope that the price difference is for more than just the NJS stamp). I just think that the RDs are probably all that I need.

It made sense to him too but if you really think about about it it doesn't work out that way.

When you pedal on an ss or fg with anything approaching decent chain tension slack develops on the bottom. Provided your ring isn't biopace level eccentric creating a significantly different mechanical advantage around its rotation this bottom slack is all that is effected by the eccentricity. The tension on the top remains the same proportional to the force you apply to the pedal and the crank length/ring diameter. You can't feel this slack since it is on the side of the cog and chain you are not tensioning(until you stop but then this slack moves to the top)

That is not to say this is never a problem. If you have too much slack on the bottom the lack of a derailer will allow it to swing to one side and derail. The derailer comment also fits in because the derailer on a geared bike or as a chain tensioner on an ss will suck up this slack and more.

As anyone who has tried fg mtb knows the pedals do not "add tremendous agility" but rather make the bike/rider much less agile.

The rd is a nice mid-range, sturdy, daily rider.

If you appreciate finely machined parts, and can afford a 75 (or get one on the cheap like I did), do it. Not essential for a daily bike. Upgrade something else on your bike that will fail, way, way before the SD's.

A thought just occured to me; being a commuter is kinda like playing road rash 3 on Sega.

*ponders*

Right. A spider arm on RDs I used for 7500mi cracked thru and also crack developed between spider arm junction radially toward axle. No user/install error here.
I replaced with 75s and they are made much better.
Another advantage is they (more importantly the better SSG chainring) are round. The chainring teeth on the RDs deformed/mushroomed after the first 100mi or so. I have 800mi on the SSG Sugino chainring and there are no deformations visible.

I don't care about the performance, but the durability and the smoothness of a evenly tensioned chainline are great benefits.

But I can't imagine needing better than 75s.

Al

I would suggest looking into and older campy road crank with 144 bcd if you already have a chairing. You can save some $$ and have a durable crank you can beat the crap out of. I'm a fan of using good parts until they die.

yeah i have been using an old set of sutour superbe road cranks (144bcd) for years now and can't imagine how a track specific crank is any better....

the superbe cranks are pretty sexy too!

some good deals to to be had in old road components (the ones that are not campy record anyway).

i am still looking for a sexy old pair of shimano 600 cranks.

+1 on NOS/ nicely used higher end road components. You can save money or break even relative to new lower end stuff like RD's, and they're way nicer. I love my 600s!

campy road cranks won't fit all bikes with the chainring mounted in the outside position.
i would use them if i had the clearance.

Wow, not related to this thread at all, but I just got a sudden urge to leave my cubicle, go to the basement and clean my chain... but I have no rags... I guess these dress shirts will have to do.

I agree with the nice older road stuff. Shimano 600, suntour superbe, sugino AT etc. Way better than the new stuff at regular price.

edit: anybody need cranks? http://cgi.ebay.ca/SHIMANO-CRANKS-AR...QQcmdZViewItem

I started out with a Sugino RD crank.

I had some issues with the RD's mechanical aesthetics, but they did the job and my chainrings centered up on them very nicely.

=====

I don't know about the "anyone" part of dutret's statement.

I think some people have different experiences with fixed gear bikes, whether road, track or mountain bike fixies.

I can see now that my words do not convey my experience to dutret in a way that has meaning to him.

Kinda interesting.

Nonetheless, I know my own experience.

In helicopters, some pilots learn how to move the entire helicopter sideways using one of the helicopter's control sets (ironically, the pedals) normally tasked with yaw, or turning left and right about a vertical axis.
Pilots who have not discovered this technique tend to believe it does not exist; or rather, they just don't "hear" it when other pilots talk about it.

Y'know, I don't skid.
I've never tried.
When I first started riding fixed, I read people's comments about skidding, and it just went in my eyes and out my ears without stopping to register in my brain.
I saw photographs of riders skidding and I had no idea the photographs involved skidding, and I could not imagine why anyone would ride a bike in that posture.
It looked ridiculous to me because I didn't understand it.
However, I knew people rode without brakes, and I started exploring techniques for stopping without a brake, all the while not knowing about skidding.
I finally developed my own technique that works for me at 73 gear inches and below, and it doesn't involve strength.
When I do it, my older son (the world's most physically fit person) says the rate at which I slow down and stop amazes him.
He says it looks like I use my brake because I stop so fast.
Imagine my surprise when I finally figured out this skidding thing about which so many people wrote.
My self-discovered method made so much sense to me, and this skidding thing seemed so incongruous.

I worked for a man once who gave me a specific job to do and the tool with which to do it.
However, he didn't tell me how to use the tool, and so I invented my own way of using it to do the job.
In hindsight, a very silly way.
Not intentionally.
Anyway, when the man saw me using the tool, he tried to treat me with respect, but he couldn't stop laughing.

So, anyway, some of us may use our fixed gear bike's pedals in ways that others cannot even imagine.
Good, bad, elegant, silly...
Who can say?

I'm with dutret here:
I don't think this experience says anything particularly in favor of the 75's - it sounds as if you don't know the history of that Sugino crankarm that you messed up - perhaps it was poorly-adjusted at some point by an earlier owner/user, which caused the tapers to get deformed a bit, which led to the later failure. I'm not sure this says anything about higher-quality cranks. If you treated a 75 crank poorly, you might get the same result.

I understand your frustration with some of the responses - especially their making assumptions about your motives. However, your original post said nothing about your reasons for upgrading, and what you were upgrading from, etc. You could have headed that off to begin with. Most people choosing between the cranks you're looking at aren't in position to realize a performance or durability difference, and so bling is the leftover reason.

I think that, properly-cared-for, either crank will be very durable. But, properly-cared-for, I would expect the same of the RD. I'm now running an old SR Apex with steel chainring on my fixed-gear, and I trust it well enough, although I don't trust it completely since I'm not the original owner.

I'm not sure what your point is. Unless you are doing bike ballet type stuff the fixed drive chain is limiting. Yes you can control the rear wheel in different ways but none of them allow for finer or better control then a good brake.
-you lose a lot of your freedom to move around on the bike.
-you cannot corner as fast.
-you cannot descend as fast.
-you cannot apply force to the rear wheel as smoothly due to the differences in force at various pedal positions
-any force you do apply is even less smooth if a bumpy road or something cause you to shift around since it is dependent on using your weight.
-you have less control of crank position.
etc. etc.

You may find it more fun to control the rear wheel with a fixed gear drive train and perhaps it even feels more natural and smooth to you. Your agility however decreases due to the limits the drive train puts on you. This decrease in agility may never bother you on the road but if you tried mtbing on even a moderately technical trail this would become quickly apparent to you and THAT was my point.