The Flip/Flop wheel

This was a great find. The Singletrackworld classified ads forum is a lottery and sometimes you need a bit of luck, such as to log on just a matter of minutes after a juicy “For Sale” ad has been posted. Good deals go fast, it’s strictly first-come-first-served and it was my turn with this one.

The wheel in question consists of a black quick-release or bolt compatible Goldtec Track “flip/flop” hub mated to a black Mavic XM719 rim (the current equivalent of my F519s) with 32 silver DT Champion straight gauge spokes laced three-cross and including two Shimano SF-MX30 freewheel cogs with 16 & 17 teeth respectively. The seller had it built by Condor Cycles, a well known and apparently well regarded bike shop on Grays Inn Road in London, much favoured by the London bicycle courier cognoscenti. We haggled the price down to £55 and I avoided the postage cost by meeting the seller, a nice chap who’d switched to using a fabulously spendy Rohloff Speedhub, to do the deal in person. While the wheel is not exactly how I would have built it (I’d have gone for 36 black DT Competition spokes and tensioned them bit more), it was a fantastic bargain for it is in near-new condition, with hardly any wear to the braking surface of the rim, and hub & freewheel bearings as smooth as new. The hub alone would have cost more new than I paid for the entire wheel!

Since I bought it back in the autumn the flip/flop wheel has sat in my garage doing nothing, waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. Back in August I was thinking of using such a wheel to set up the Inbred as a “doublespeed” by carrying two freewheel cogs with different numbers of teeth, which is what the previous owner had used the wheel for. I will copy this at some point, but initially I’ve decided to remove the 17 tooth freewheel and replace it with a 16 tooth fixed cog.

“A fixed wheel? On a mountain bike?” I hear you cry, “What madness is this!”

Well I read recently, on some website or other, a fixie aficionado stating categorically that everyone needs to try a fixed wheel bike at some time or other or they won’t know what they’re missing. It’s got to be worth a go!

There are several reasons why I’ve been slow to do anything with the flip/flop wheel. Firstly, I couldn’t find a cheap source of a compatible, reasonable quality, threaded “track” cog. This was made more difficult because I didn’t really know what to look for, nor where to find it. Fixed wheels, where the sprocket is screwed directly onto the hub body, seem to be the preserve of cycle couriers and track racers (hence the name “track cog”) and not knowing anyone who could be remotely described as either I was searching in the dark. Certainly the niche singlespeed brand Surly, whose excellent stainless steel chain-ring and cassette cog currently adorn my singlespeed, produce equally good track cogs and lock-rings, but at £30+ they represent very poor value when one considers that a 9 speed Shimano XT cassette can be bought new for less! Eventually I took a punt on a really cheap cog on Ebay, and bought a lock-ring from the same seller for £11.90 in all, even though the item description mentioned something about a “left-hand thread”, the purpose of which I didn’t properly understand at the time.

I didn’t really know what would turn up, but there was no need to worry. The track cog is unbranded but made from thick steel, uses a regular right-hand thread and requires a 1/8” chain, which spreads the loads a bit more and suits my SRAM PC1 chain just fine. It’s also black which will allow it to sit unobtrusively to the left when not in use. The lock-ring is aluminium and also black, but unfortunately the 4-point tool required to fit and remove it has smaller pins than the tool required to remove a Shimano freewheel, and I don’t have one. You pays your money… Nevertheless, for now I can tighten it sufficiently using a pin spanner. The interesting thing about this is that it has a left-hand thread: in other words, you tighten it by screwing it the opposite way to the track cog. I had imagined that this would render it useless, but on closer inspection the Goldtec hub has a smaller, opposing thread sitting outboard of the cog threads at the ends of its body. I’d initially thought that these smaller threads were for use with cogs of 15 teeth or less, but the lock-ring screws on to them, butting up against the track cog and thus securing it firmly in place. Simple!

Then there were the tyres. Originally my singlespeed had been fitted with 2.4” WTB Mutano Raptors, a very light tyre for their size and with a tread pattern suited to hardpack but little else. Consequently they were very quick (which I liked) but tended to give up all pretence at grip in the wet or when cornering hard (which I didn’t like… repeatedly). At the time I finished building my utility wheels I found some 2.5” Syncros FLT Race tyres reduced from £35 each to just £10 that were apparently too good to resist. My reasoning was that if they did the trick then I’d buy a third tyre to fit to the flip/flop wheel, but unfortunately they proved to be a duff purchase. While being very big and giving extraordinary cornering grip they turned out to have the worst rolling resistance that I’ve ever experienced and were also heavy. So they had to go, and fortunately a foolish Ebay punter paid me more for them covered in mud than I had paid when I bought them new, or indeed more than he could have paid if he’d shopped around! As long as he’s happy, the dopey sap…! I replaced the unloved Syncros tyres by returning from whence I had come, to WTB, but this time I was trying their 2.5” Weirwolf Race. These had got a glowing write-up in Singletrack’s mega tyre test last year and were now on offer for £15 each. They miraculously combine most of the speed of the old Mutano Raptors with most of the grip of the Syncros FLTs thanks to soft compound DNA rubber, all for a reasonable weight: exactly what I was after, so after just a couple of rides on these I bought a third Weirwolf and have just finished building up the flip/flop wheel. Test ride time!