The Flip/Flop as a Fixie

This was going to be a new experience. I’ve not ridden a fixed wheel bike since the age of four or five but that had stabilisers so doesn’t count! Task number one was to install the wheel on the bike for the first time, which is when I noticed that the Goldtec hub’s spindle is in fact a fair bit thicker than a normal 10mm rear quick-release-compatible spindle yet it has flats machined into its ends to allow it to be slotted into the frame’s 10mm drop-outs. This has a number of implications: it can be fiddly to engage the hub spindle when it is first offered up to the drop out; it’s not possible to use the DMR-type chain tugs that slot over a standard 10mm spindle and enable the use of quick-release skewers with “track end” style drop-outs; but it does allow the use of meaningfully chunky hex bolts instead. So I had to ditch my DMR chain tugs, and the Deore QR which they allow the use of, in favour of the loathsome On-One tugs that came with the frame and the hex bolts that came with the wheel. It’s no biggie – ready to roll!

The first thing I noticed was that there was nothing to notice, until I absent-mindedly stopped pedalling and my own momentum wrenched my legs unwillingly around a couple of cycles before the brain kicked in. No freewheeling up to kerbs, roots, steps, etc… I’d have to ride right at and over them, and if the pedals hit then tough! That’s not a great feature to have on a MTB, in all honesty. Neither is the need to keep pedalling when leaning into a corner – I broke my leg doing this on a racer in my teens and don’t wish to repeat the experience! Once I was out in open country, with a bit of room to manoeuvre and cruise at a steady pace, it was easy to forget that this was a fixed wheel. Spinning along on the flat or climbing a hill was no different to using a freewheel, but a big difference was to be found when letting the bike go on the downhills. Of course, you can’t stop pedalling and with a single 32/16 ratio it’s not long before things start to get a bit frantic! There are two ways to handle this, assuming that we dismiss spinning your legs so quickly that they unscrew at the hips and you end up a gibbering wreck: grab the brakes, or apply backward pressure on the pedals. I was using soooo much brake that the pads must have been screaming for mercy, so I tried the second approach. It sort of worked, and I dare say that it gets easier and more effective with practice. It’s an odd thing to want to do though. Surely downhills are the payback for having dragged yourself to the top in the first place, so quite why you’d want to expend even more energy by slowing yourself on the way down is lost on me!

I found that the backward pressure technique had but one benefit. The trails are almost universally muddy at the moment and I found that as I instinctively backed off while entering corners the slight braking force that I applied via the pedals was enough to send the rear tyre into a rather exciting controlled slide. Not a full-on skid nor a complete wash-out, but enough to set a bit of adrenaline pumping! That aside though, I found little to recommend a MTB fixie and was glad of the opportunity to flip the wheel over onto its freewheel side. One has to remember that the victimless sins of suspension and gears have already been forgone on this bike, so to do without a freewheel in addition requires much caution heaped upon caution and I found that this limits the fun potential far too much for my liking.

A freewheel is such a cheap, readily available aide that it seems almost daft to wilfully go without one. As I bimbled about the Herts countryside not really making a great deal of effort (see, that’s what singlespeeding does to you) I was trying to think of what might be the advantages of going fixed. There don’t appear to be many!

1) Track stands become very easy;
2) You don’t have to unclip from the pedals at traffic lights and junctions (see 1 above);
3) Fewer moving parts = less to go wrong (but then how many freewheels do you get through!?!);
4) You can apply braking as well as accelerative force to the pedals;
5) You can ride backwards (and, in all probability, fall off trying).

It’s not exactly a fait accompli! One can understand why couriers seem to favour fixies in a city environment, but I don’t know whether track racers do simply because an arcane UCI rule says they must or because there’s some other unseen advantage.
The wheel itself performed faultlessly, however unless I have a “road to Damascus” experience in the meantime it won’t be more than a couple of rides before the track cog is ditched in favour of a second freewheel cog.