Looking for ideas for making Boots a fixed gear Allways Adventure Beastie (I’m currently leaning toward option 1).
Goal: Three fixed gears that can be simply shifted on the road/trail to cover all terrains. Gears needed: High: 60-70” for long road descents. Yes, I could go with a lower gear freewheel, but fixed is far preferred for me. Main: 50” for most terrain, at least round these parts. Low: 40-43” for steeper trails, snow, mud, mush, et al. To head off the inevitable “why fixed, that’s nuts!” responses: I’m set on fixed. Why? I’ve constant neurological vertigo as part of my bludgeoned brain, and fixed gear means more feedback for proprioception to work and helps me recover as I ride 2-4 times as much as freewheel riding on the same bike. Plus, I love the way it rides, so even if my brain heals to the point this is no longer the case, I may well stay fixed because I love it. Options I see: 1. White Ind. ENO Eccentric Hub on stock frame. I’ve watched videos of gear tensioning and it looks simple enough with practice, even with a loaded bike. Challenge: Fixed side requires WI proprietary cog, not dingle option. I see two ways to address this. A. shift by removing the lock ring and swapping cogs, having a matching chainring for each of the three gears to keep the total number of teeth identical. B. Single cog/dingle cog “locked” onto the freewheel side, same triple chain ring setup. Either way, I’d go for roughly a 4t delta in the cogs, with the same for the chainrings. Advantages: keeps Boots with the option of using freewheel in the future, lower cost (presuming it works and the ENO hub holds for fixed gear bikepacking). WI says it isn’t designed for fixed gear, let alone bikepacking, but they know it can work on a steel frame (no go on aluminum for lack of grip). Disadvantages: May not hold under high torque load. Worst case scenario is I have to re tension the chain, WI says. They say the hub is rock solid. If this happens too often, I’d need to go to option two. 2. Replace the dropouts to be horizontal. Configure similarly to my current Quickbeam and Hunqabeam. Advantages: known, solid, reliable, purpose built for fixed gear. Tested for bikepacking on all terrains and works great. Disadvantages: cost, including a repaint is $800-1,000. ~~~ Anything I’ve not thought of? Anything to consider? Experience abusing an ENO eccentric hub similarly? Best practices for a fixed cog locking on a freewheel hub? Thanks! With abandon, Patrick www.MindYourHeadCoop.org www.CatholicHalos.org www.DeaconPatrick.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
