Coaster Brakes

winston plenty of times when riding fixed, the bike is actually pushing your legs round, such as when doing the fixed equivalent of freewheeling or going down hill....even if you managed this back pedal brake / fixed conversion every time you took forward pressure of the pedals you would start braking...

The whole concept of this is as confusing to me as approaching the speed of light and becoming an infinite mass and then achieving time travel.. etc..

you could just skid down every single hill?

thorn chainrings i've heard are pretty good. double sided, too. get them at sjs.

hippy Sugino Zen Messenger do 144BCD, black, 44T. I've never used them but they're only a chainring so not much to worry about.
I use a Stronglight Zicral 44T, 135BCD, alu.

hey hippy is that for sale?

The Sugino ring? I don't have one. You can buy them though.

Where?

I was going to email hubjub for a quote, but I get I reckon they'll be way overpriced compared to the Thorn ones which will probably just be as good, if not better because they're double sided.

meh, I can't remember the sizing I'm afraid. Sugino's website has a conversion thing.

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/category-CHAINRINGS-49.htm

"If you skid, you will wear your tyres out in places quicker with the even ratio of 48/16. You have 9 skid spots whereas I have 17! :)"

not to belabour a point, but you'll actually have only one (bare as shit) patch with 48/16. odd toothed cogs might seem the way to go, just watch out for 45/15 and 51/17

as mr brown has it:

Skid Patch

Fixed-gear riders who make a habit of doing "skip stops" you will wear the rear tire out considerably faster than those who use a brake. This problem is exacerbated by certain gear ratios, because they may tend to repeatedly skid on the same section of the tire.
Riders who plan to do a lot of skip stops should consider the ratio when selecting their chainring and rear sprocket. The mathematics of this is actually fairly simple:

Simplify the gear ratio to the smallest equivalent whole number ratio.
The denominator of the resulting fraction is the number of skid patches you will have on your rear tire.
Examples:
44/16 simplifies to 11/4, so there would be 4 skid patches.

45/15 simplifies to 3/1 so there would only be 1 skid patch.

42/15 simplifies to 14/5, so there would be 5 skid patches.

43/15 can't be further simplified, so there would be 15 skid patches.

This is based on the assumption that you always skid with the same foot forward.
If you are an ambidextrous skidder, and the calculation gives an even result, your number of skid patches will be the same.

If you are an ambidextrous skidder, and have an odd denominator, the number of possible skid patches will be doubled.

take the chain off your sprocket every few days and turn the wheel by one tooth, put the chain back on....it'll even the skid wear out.

hippy The whole concept of this is as confusing to me as approaching the speed of light and becoming an infinite mass and then achieving time travel.. etc..

But because I'm approaching infinite mass already I'll never make it to lightspeed. If I could only go back to my teenage years....

You could rotate the tyre on the rim too. It's easier just to gear odd.

hippy The Sugino ring? I don't have one. You can buy them though.

CONdor have a selection of black 75 rings in their scary NJS cabinet.

wibble

Stef to work out gear inches ypu gotta multiply your chainring teeth by your rim circumference then divide it by the sprocket
e.g. (42x27)/16= very good gering for the big smoke 70.8 with track bars and good legs it'll make you sprint way faster than cars up to theyr 3rd gear, fast as a bullet...
Your rim circumference is 27 inches?

MessenJah [quote]Your rim circumference is 27 inches?
[/quote]

700c is approx 27 - it's something like 26.465533