Fixed Gear - Chain Questions

Now that I have my fixed gear -- a Bianchi Pista (for all of 20 hours), a
couple of questions.

1. How do you get the rear wheel off? Do they all have master links?

2. I hear people talking about have two different gears - on on each side of
the wheel. Sure enough, my bike does appear to have both sides threaded for
a fixed gear
2a. What is needed to put a new gear on the other side - a cog and a
lock ring?
2b. What about chain length? I suppose that the vertical drop outs are
long enough for some different in gear diameter, but how much room for
different gears do you practically have? I've got a 16 cog on the gear
right now and I'd like to put a lower gear (ie, more teeth) on the other
side.

Thanks for all the help.

-Kalukis

Kalukis wrote:

Now that I have my fixed gear -- a Bianchi Pista (for all of 20 hours), a
couple of questions.

1. How do you get the rear wheel off? Do they all have master links?

You don't break the chain for wheel removal, just loosen the axle nuts,
slide the wheel forward, and derail the chain from the chainring. This
will give you enough slack to slide the axle back and out of the fork ends.

Unfortunately, most fixed-specific frames have these old-fashioned
rear-opening fork ends instead of the more modern "drop out" type where
the opening is forward.

The rear opening design makes wheel changes slower and messier, for no
functional advantage--it's just an atavistic styling exercise.

2. I hear people talking about have two different gears - on on each side of
the wheel. Sure enough, my bike does appear to have both sides threaded for
a fixed gear
2a. What is needed to put a new gear on the other side - a cog and a
lock ring?

You can thread a fixed sproket or a single speed freewheel onto the
opposite side of the hub, but that side doesn't have the smaller left
hand threads for a lock ring.

Since there's no provision for a lock ring on the other side, it
shouldn't be relied upon for stopping--the sprocket might unscrew at the
worst possible time.

See: http://sheldonbrown.com/fixed-conver...l#freewheelhub for
details and techniques for dealing with this.

Unfortunately the Pista isn't set up for a rear brake, so I really can't
recommend using the opposite side of the hub. If you do, use the side
with the lockring for the lower gear, because that's the one that's more
liable to unscrew.

2b. What about chain length? I suppose that the vertical drop outs are
long enough for some different in gear diameter, but how much room for
different gears do you practically have? I've got a 16 cog on the gear
right now and I'd like to put a lower gear (ie, more teeth) on the other
side.

The Bianchi Pista doesn't have vertical drop outs, it has rear-opening
horizontal fork ends. See: http://sheldonbrown.com/gloss_d.html#dropout

There's plenty of adjustment room. For each tooth added or subtracted to
either sprocket, the axle only moves 1/8" (3 mm)

I've gots of lots of other fixed-gear info at:

http://sheldonbrown.com/fixed

Sheldon "Fixed Gear" Brown
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On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 14:09:44 +0000, Kalukis wrote:

Now that I have my fixed gear -- a Bianchi Pista (for all of 20 hours), a
couple of questions.

1. How do you get the rear wheel off? Do they all have master links?

Yes, they do, but you don't need to take it off. Loosen the nuts, then
the wheel will probably move in enough to encuorage the chain off of the
cog, then you pull the wheel off, moving the chain again around the axle.

2. I hear people talking about have two different gears - on on each
side of the wheel. Sure enough, my bike does appear to have both sides
threaded for a fixed gear

That's what I*have.

2a. What is needed to put a new gear on the other side - a cog and a
lock ring?

Yup. Sometimes the other side is threaded for freewheels, no locknut.

2b. What about chain length? I suppose that the vertical drop outs
are
long enough for some different in gear diameter, but how much room for
different gears do you practically have?

Lots.

I've got a 16 cog on the gear
right now and I'd like to put a lower gear (ie, more teeth) on the other
side.

You may need more links, depending on how tight the chain is right now. I
have used a second master link to allow for easy change of chain length.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're
_`\(,_ | still a rat. --Lilly Tomlin
(_)/ (_) |

kalutis- Bianchi Pista (for all of 20 hours), a
couple of questions.

1. How do you get the rear wheel off? Do they all have master links?

Loosen the locknuts, push wheel forward, take chain off the ring, move wheel
aft, take chain off cog, remove wheel. many chains have snaplinks and track
chains have masterlinks but you don't need to split the chain to get the wheel
out.

2. I hear people talking about have two different gears - on on each side of
the wheel. Sure enough, my bike does appear to have both sides threaded for
a fixed gear
2a. What is needed to put a new gear on the other side - a cog and a
lock ring?
2b. What about chain length? I suppose that the vertical drop outs are
long enough for some different in gear diameter, but how much room for
different gears do you practically have? I've got a 16 cog on the gear
right now and I'd like to put a lower gear (ie, more teeth) on the other
side.

yes to what you said. the horizontal dropouts will take care of chainlength.

Thanks for all the help.

-Kalukis







BRBR


Peter Chisholm
Vecchio's Bicicletteria
1833 Pearl St.
Boulder, CO, 80302
(303)440-3535
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