I believe that fixed gear road bikes are the most efficient machine for transport. Yes, you have to get up and muscle up the hills and spin down them. But the incredable efficiency of a fixed drivetrain has to be expericenced to be believed. I often let friends try mine and most immediately comment on it. The effort to produce 20 mph on my fixed would only produce 18 mph on my geared ride. Even with hills, which I have here, the efficiency is still high. While climbing, your power output must be high with a fix, but you get up the hill much faster as well; so the total amount of work done more or less equals out.

I ride my fix commuting every day and on long Saturday rides, including centuries. I love the "flow" of the ride on the fix. I would say the only downside is the lack of freewheeling on the longer rides, to allow one to take a butt break from the saddle. On longer rides, I always like to see some hills later in the ride so that I can get up off my butt!

Dave

I ride fixie because it's a bombproof bike. I do almost no maintainence on my bike other than a monthly wheel-truing, chain-cleaning/tensioning, and weekly chain-lube. No cables to get loose, nothing to worry about. The parts never break and even if one does break, it's generally cheap to replace.

I also like the feel of it. I feel confident on it.

I agree with all the other reasons that the other posters gave. I'm surprised no one mentioned this however.

Personally, I ride geared bikes most of the time. However, there are days when I've got limited time to get in a ride, like an hour or so. If I take a geared bike on an hour ride, I get back feeling like I hardly got a workout. If I take my fixie road bike on an hour ride, I feel like I get a better workout. I would estimate the factor to be about 1.5. That is, for every hour you ride a fixed gear you can get about as much exercise as riding a geared bike 1.5 hours. All that from not coasting.

I guess I could get a similar effect from riding my MTB on the road with knobbies inflated to 30 - 40 psi, but that would be noisier and not as much fun. I like the position on the road bike better. Plus it's so quiet and smooth.

Bonus - when I first started riding fixed I was forced to pedal through turns instead of coasting. This is a good method of improving your cycling technique. Put low gears on and force yourself to improve your spin if you like, too.

In conclusion, in addition to being fun and being one with the bike, it is also a great training tool.

IMO, any bike that requires a monthly wheel-truing, chain-cleaning/tensioning, and weekly chain-lube is far from what I would call bombproof.

I alwya feel confident on a bike... until it fails.

I understand your misconstruation of my post Shecky. Please allow me to explain what I said a little more in depth:

I do wheel-truing and chain maintainence not because it is a fixed-gear, but because I ride in a dense, urban environment. Riding over pot-holes every day can put your wheel out of true pretty easily whether your bike be geared, single-speed, or fixed. As for the chain, when one rides in a city you'll definitely get grit in your chain which needs to be cleaned out regularly. With regards to tensioning the chain monthly, there are two reasons for this: First, when you take your wheels off to true them you need to retension the chain as you put the rear wheel back on. Second, by putting a lot of torque on your chain (starting and stopping with it) it'll naturally get stretched out a little faster than a geared/ss chain might. Therefore you should retension your chain and replace it about once per year on a FG bike.

I hope you can see that this routine maintainence has very little to do with the fact that I ride a fixed-gear and has more to do with my love of my bicycle and my desire to have it last until the end of time. In fact, if you ride a geared bicycle in the city you'd probably have to do maintainence in ADDITION to what I do (including derailleur maintainence and brake systems) to have it last just as long.

As for trusting my bicycle? With a little bit of maintainence, I trust my bicycle completely.

i agree with DV. it sounds like routine maintenance to me, rather than the effects of a bombing on the ol' bicycle. i doubt if DV's wheels require a truing each month,in the sense that a very wobbly wheel requires a truing, but by making tiny adjustments to the trueness (truth?=P) of your wheelset frequently, you help assure a longlife of the wheelset.

as for chains, EVERYone who rides regularly needs to keep that chain loobed and clean if they want their bicycle to function properly. as for chain tension issues, i find it's easier to get the tension right on my fix than it is to put the rear wheel back on my mtn bike, with the jungle that resides in those dropouts.

so, yeah, if DV is brakeless, that saves some of maintenance. as does a lack of derailleurs (goshdurn pulleys!). the maintenance DV described is of the sort that any meticulous cyclist will perform on their bike. unless they have one of those shaft-drive bicycles. do they make shaft-drive fixies?

-rob

The reason I started to ride SS/fixed was many moons ago I was on my MTB and somehow my rear derailleur got sucked up into my wheel and pretty much crapped the bed. Luckily this happened at the tail end of the ride just before it started getting dark. A friend called me later that night and asked if I wanted to do an early morning ride the next day. Of course I said yes. But being young and having very limited funds and wanting to ride the next morning I picked a set of gears, shortened my chain and crossed my fingers.

That early morning ride was the best ride I'd had since I started biking. I climbed hills that I've never gotten all the way up before. I navigated the rocky trails like a bloodhound who has "cought the scent". Granted it wasn't a true fixed gear. I could still coast if I wanted to but I don't think that I did that much. Having the freedom of just looking at your surrounding concentrating on the course and not being concerned about what gear to be in and becoming "one" with the bike.

Eventually I bought a new derailleur form my bike, but that was long after I built myself a real FG bike.

Only if the wheel wasn't built properly. I constantly bomb stuff on my fully rigid SS MTB that is far worse than any urban environment ever dishes out and my wheels rarerly need to be trued. If I true them twice a year that is out of the ordinary. Even when I flat spot or dent a rim I barely have to touch the rim. The fixed gets thrashed on the streets, bunny-hopped, jumped and even taken on the trails sometimes and it holds up just as well.

As for the chain, I frequently lube mine. If you ride your bike a lot you need to.

Actually, a FG rear wheel should require less frequent truing than a multispeed cassette/freewheel type since it is dishless. There were shaft drive (via bevel gears) fixies about 100 years ago...Columbia made them (maybe other brands too?) and Major Taylor rode one ...don't know of any modern ones though...

for modern shaftbikes check out this:
https://www.biomega.dk/
those are "high-end". there are also some cheap
models from other companies but they are ugly.

unless you're riding your SS MTB out on the trails 150 miles a week, you're comparing apples to oranges.

*shrug*
maybe you ride better quality wheels than he does. maybe he weighs more than you do. maybe he's more meticulous about keeping his wheels in true than you are.

or maybe you're exactly the same weight on exactly the same bikes in exactly the same environment with exactly the same amount of anal retentiveness, in which case yeh, your comparison is valid.

You're right. Riding high speed through rock gardens is harder on your wheels.


My point exactly concerning wheel build. Because I'm certainly not running any high zoot wheels.

Ask any competent wheel builder and I'm sure they'll agree with this statement: If you are trueing your wheels monthly they weren't built properly.

DV I command you to stop trueing your wheels on a monthly basis! Also, because of your over zealous wheel trueing, it has been decided that you must immediatly submit a notarized bike maintenance schedule to this forum for approval. If you do not comply with this order we (Bikeforums members) will condemn you to 5 years Huffydom in which no amount of maintenance will keep you rolling.

There are millions of bikes out there doing daily heavy duty in similar environments going through life without ever getting their wheels trued. And are still reasonably true. Some of these put in decades of use like this. I have one myself. Many of these bikes are single speed coaster brake or three speeds, live outside 24/7, and are lucky to get a shot of WD-40 when the chain squeaks. I personally am a little nicer to my bikes. My three speed gets a few drops of 30wt motor oil now and then.

If you must have your wheels absolutely true, or just like messing with your bike, I can fully understand. But any bike that needs monthly truing doesn't fit into the bombproof category. Or at least has to get in line behind the afore mentioned coaster brakes and three speeds.

If you replace the chain once a year religiously, I suggest you might be able to omit ever really cleaning the thing at all. Unless it gets caked with mud or something. I have a pet theory about cleaning being worse than replacing.

In the end, I think of single speeds-fixed, free or coaster-as just simpler. I like to mess with bikes, too. But it's interesting, I find when I decide to stop repacking, readjusting and generally stop messing with one, it gets along fine without all the extra attention.