You are reading a single comment by @deleted and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@deleted
Look again closely at photo 1. The chain actually passes though the spokes from the RHS chainring, to the LHS rear sprocket (the photo being, as many have realised, reveresed). This was an experimental project Raleigh carried out in the late 70's, but were forced to abandon after the controversial stage win of Deniese Brady in the Belgian Open of 1981. This idea limped on for a few years, most notably in the early "Sidebender" Grifters and later Striker variants, but the engineering tooling of the necessary "latchkey" spokes fell victim to the viscous Trades Union/Management relations in Nottingham at prevailing at the time. The main purpose of the design was to cross-torque the drive to allow straighter acceleration and less rear wheel tramp,which Raleigh design chiefs believed was the future, given the massive growth of Eastern European thighs at that time. However, the public explosion, during the final of the East Berlin 376k Sprint which was televised to a trans-soviet audience of over 3,763,892 millions of viewers, of the thighs of Ulga Korbett (later to become both USSR champion gymnast and latterly cake shop leasee), put paid to the attendant advertising campaign. Following this, and the tragic death of Les "the rat-tail" Dixson in an accident at the factory in early Feb 1979, Raleigh floundered and eventually ceased all production, becoming Conservative Party Cloning Centre in its later years.
So all in all, a bargain.