Your chain might be too worn out to properly adjust everything. Last winter I kinda taught myself the basics of adjusting the shifting system, but I had a similar problem that was only solved by putting in a new chain.
Your chain might be too worn out to properly adjust everything. Last winter I kinda taught myself the basics of adjusting the shifting system, but I had a similar problem that was only solved by putting in a new chain.
It's basically all new. New chain, new cassette, new shifting cables. When I brought it back after the tuneup, they also noticed that the big ring had some bent/broken teeth, so they replaced that too.
Then it should be possible to adjust it. It's actually pretty simple and there a good YouTube tutorials. But it still sounds like the entire system has too much flex. Does the chain have the right number of links? Maybe it's slightly too long.
Park Tools has some tips though honestly front shifter adjustment is always a big pain at the best of times. You could try just checking the top range screw, maybe it's set up to only just be able to move far enough in that direction, so when under load it can't quite make it.
That's the sort of obvious thing that mechanics would have already checked, though. Is it really _speed_ that's the difference between will and won't shift, or is it amount of pressure on the pedal?
And does it make a difference which gear you're in on the back? If you shift the back to the smallest gear, that'll give you the most possible slack in the chain, which might help things out -- if both front and rear are in the largest gears, that uses up the biggest amount of chain, which makes everything tighter and have a harder time.
No idea about the number of links, as I am very much not familiar with bike maintenance. I was hoping that the 3 different bike mechanics that had looked at it would have caught that.
I have a more bike savvy friend that is going to take a look at it, so this gives me some good info to point him in the right direction. And then at some point when I start educating myself, it'll make more sense to me
Park Tools has some tips though honestly front shifter adjustment is always a big pain at the best of times. You could try just checking the top range screw, maybe it's set up to only just be able to move far enough in that direction, so when under load it can't quite make it.
That's the sort of obvious thing that mechanics would have already checked, though. Is it really _speed_ that's the difference between will and won't shift, or is it amount of pressure on the pedal?
And does it make a difference which gear you're in on the back? If you shift the back to the smallest gear, that'll give you the most possible slack in the chain, which might help things out -- if both front and rear are in the largest gears, that uses up the biggest amount of chain, which makes everything tighter and have a harder time.
It's hard to say for sure but it seems easier to get it to shift up when the back gear is in the smallest ring. But again, it usually requires me to slow down my pedaling.
In general I'm almost always in the smaller half of my rear gears and then switch between large and small on the front depending on what I'm doing.
Park Tools has some tips though honestly front shifter adjustment is always a big pain at the best of times. You could try just checking the top range screw, maybe it's set up to only just be able to move far enough in that direction, so when under load it can't quite make it.
That's the sort of obvious thing that mechanics would have already checked, though. Is it really _speed_ that's the difference between will and won't shift, or is it amount of pressure on the pedal?
And does it make a difference which gear you're in on the back? If you shift the back to the smallest gear, that'll give you the most possible slack in the chain, which might help things out -- if both front and rear are in the largest gears, that uses up the biggest amount of chain, which makes everything tighter and have a harder time.
It's hard to say for sure but it seems easier to get it to shift up when the back gear is in the smallest ring. But again, it usually requires me to slow down my pedaling.
In general I'm almost always in the smaller half of my rear gears and then switch between large and small on the front depending on what I'm doing.
My bolds, forgive me if I'm stating the obvious. But I talk from some experience, you can't just shift gear if you're pushing hard on the pedals, it takes a bit of, I'd say, mechanical sympathy, you have to ease off a little, shift, let the chain shuffle over and then push on again. I've ridden with some people who will hit the shifter and then ride for half a mile with the chain clack clack clacking and then say "What's going on?!".
Sometimes you can shift when pushing hard and get away with it, sometimes it won't move over, and sometimes everything will jam up like billy-oh. And then something on the bike breaks or you fall over and you break.
But, on the other hand, I've set gears up on the stand, that don't quite work on the road. So you adjust further. You don't just say "It works on the stand, deal with it".
And, on the gripping hand, sometimes something that doesn't work can be fixed by a new chain or somesuch. But as you've said you have a new chain (etc) so it's probably not that.
Park Tools has some tips though honestly front shifter adjustment is always a big pain at the best of times. You could try just checking the top range screw, maybe it's set up to only just be able to move far enough in that direction, so when under load it can't quite make it.
That's the sort of obvious thing that mechanics would have already checked, though. Is it really _speed_ that's the difference between will and won't shift, or is it amount of pressure on the pedal?
And does it make a difference which gear you're in on the back? If you shift the back to the smallest gear, that'll give you the most possible slack in the chain, which might help things out -- if both front and rear are in the largest gears, that uses up the biggest amount of chain, which makes everything tighter and have a harder time.
It's hard to say for sure but it seems easier to get it to shift up when the back gear is in the smallest ring. But again, it usually requires me to slow down my pedaling.
In general I'm almost always in the smaller half of my rear gears and then switch between large and small on the front depending on what I'm doing.
My bolds, forgive me if I'm stating the obvious. But I talk from some experience, you can't just shift gear if you're pushing hard on the pedals, it takes a bit of, I'd say, mechanical sympathy, you have to ease off a little, shift, let the chain shuffle over and then push on again. I've ridden with some people who will hit the shifter and then ride for half a mile with the chain clack clack clacking and then say "What's going on?!".
Sometimes you can shift when pushing hard and get away with it, sometimes it won't move over, and sometimes everything will jam up like billy-oh. And then something on the bike breaks or you fall over and you break.
Oh yeah, I get you. It's not like I'm going up an incline and shifting gears. This is just on a normal flat surface and the current gear is pretty easy so I want to move it up. Before the tune up, and the 4 years prior, this was working perfectly fine. It's just now after it was worked on, it is not.
Can someone recommend a good brand of single speed bike on Amazon? My old bike is finally kaput and i want something for the warm months without all those damn cables. Just pedal forward to go, pedal backwards to stop.
Can someone recommend a good brand of single speed bike on Amazon? My old bike is finally kaput and i want something for the warm months without all those damn cables. Just pedal forward to go, pedal backwards to stop.
What's your price range? The options are limitless.
Also keep in mind whatever you buy at the lower price range you're likely going to want to swap out at least the tires right away and maybe the pedals and seat some time in the future.
dammit they all have cable brakes. is there a term i'm supposed to search with that means the other kind of brakes?
A fixed gear is when the cog doesn't spin freely when not engaged allowing you to back pedal to slow down and even lock your wheel completely for sweet skids. These are often referred to as "fixed gear" "fixies" or "track bikes." Many also come with flip flop hubs so you can ride single sperd (non fixed) if you want.
A coaster brake is an actual braking system within the rear hub that applies braking pressure when back pedaled. These are common in cruiser bikes.
Many states require you to have a least one brake on your bike by law. I think coaster brakes count but fixed gear don't so you'll always see a fixed gear ship with brakes. Most people will at least remove the rear one and keep the front for safety/emergency. Keep both if you're in an especially hilly area. Removed both if you wanna be radical.
well the bike doesn't look too bad. the bits that should jiggled, jiggled. the bits that should stay in place, stayed in place. The bag i had over the seat was in tatters but the seat doesn't look much worse for wear.
Guess the real test is when i can get it out to fill the tires and check the chain and breaks
Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
I think people who ride fixies no brakes at all are insane
But then it is known that I am Not Radical
@Magic Pink size charts will tell you what frame size you need. Just like clothes, most bikes aren't One-Size Fits All; you'll want to check standover height and reach at the very least because a wrongly-sized bike will give you all sorts of pains and problems. (My Surly for example is just the right size for me to ride comfortably for hours but if it were any taller then coming off the seat in emergency stops or whatever would really have him live up to his name.) For an inexpensive bike you can probably just check in person and ride it around a bit to see if it's comfortable? Unless you're planning to go for hours in the saddle.
I swapped Shucker's headset and stem for a Nitto/Chris King set in February and next on the docket is new drops. When I buy the new drops (purely for color aesthetic reasons because I am shallow) I plan to also do the tapes, cables and cable covers for brakes and shifters. Bike Shop Guy suggests I should take a whack at doing it alone, and I'd like to learn, but... how impossible is swapping brake and shifter cables? Am I gonna really bork it all up?
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Shifter cables are more difficult, but mostly because it involves setting up and reindexing the gears. It's completely doable, but it takes a fair bit of trial and error and it helps to be methodical. The Park Tool guide is very good and as long as you do the steps in order you can't really go wrong.
Do you have a stand? Setting the gears up isn't difficult per se, but it really, really helps to have a way to spin the drivetrain while changing up and down gears while making your adjustments. There's a lot of "tweak the barrel adjuster until you get to the minimum tension necessary for the rear derailleur to shift into the largest cog while in the smallest chainring" kind of adjustment
Fixie with no brakes is just asking for an accident the first time a panic stop comes up.
In general, I don't really get them, but I also don't really ride road or in the city much.
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
Hmm. I do not have a stand but can buy one easily enough. Probably should really.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Maybe it's coming from a hilly area but I can not IMAGINE biking without front and rear brakes. Maybe I'd feel differently with one disc brake? But coaster brakes are just skid city, and for v clamps I always used the front way more than the rear but they were both important.
In general, I don't really get them, but I also don't really ride road or in the city much.
Fixed-gear, for me, was mostly because it's _fun_, it really reminds you that you're riding a bike for the sake of riding a bike, rather than as a means of getting from A to B. They're neat to tool around downtown / in cities with because you can get going fast and stop fast, and trackstands are super super easy on a fixed-gear which is satisfying in a sort of dumb way when you're at traffic lights.
I did it on the cheap, though, got a used 10-speed for $5, removed the shifters and cassette, botched the rear hub together with a cog and BB lockring and threadlock, and it was surprisingly okay. I actively don't recommend that approach to making one, I think it was mostly luck that the back wheel didn't come undone at any point.
I built up a singlespeed for mountain biking one year and that was okay but I wound up pushing it up more climbs than I wanted to when my legs gave out. Then I switched it to fixed-gear for a couple of rides, and that was more than I could handle, I missed the ability to position pedals to get past rocks and things, and having to keep pedalling on downhills was also just too much distraction on top of avoiding trees and such.
I plan to also do the tapes, cables and cable covers for brakes and shifters. Bike Shop Guy suggests I should take a whack at doing it alone, and I'd like to learn, but... how impossible is swapping brake and shifter cables? Am I gonna really bork it all up?
Make sure you have a good set of wirecutters (or you can use a Dremel with cutting disk) to cut the cables and housing with -- if you wind up with a raggedy end on the cable and it starts coming unravelled, everything will be super annoying to deal with, and if you wind up with crushed/snaggly housing, the cable can drag on it which is also a pain. Might be worth getting some cable ends while you're getting the other parts, though then you need big pliers (or a mole wrench) to squeeze it once it's on.
And watch a video / read something about how to rewrap handlebars, don't do what I did and just go for it "because how hard can it be"? (answer: well, my handlebars are all covered in the end, but they are _ugly_ looking)
Posts
It's basically all new. New chain, new cassette, new shifting cables. When I brought it back after the tuneup, they also noticed that the big ring had some bent/broken teeth, so they replaced that too.
That's the sort of obvious thing that mechanics would have already checked, though. Is it really _speed_ that's the difference between will and won't shift, or is it amount of pressure on the pedal?
And does it make a difference which gear you're in on the back? If you shift the back to the smallest gear, that'll give you the most possible slack in the chain, which might help things out -- if both front and rear are in the largest gears, that uses up the biggest amount of chain, which makes everything tighter and have a harder time.
I have a more bike savvy friend that is going to take a look at it, so this gives me some good info to point him in the right direction. And then at some point when I start educating myself, it'll make more sense to me
It's hard to say for sure but it seems easier to get it to shift up when the back gear is in the smallest ring. But again, it usually requires me to slow down my pedaling.
In general I'm almost always in the smaller half of my rear gears and then switch between large and small on the front depending on what I'm doing.
My bolds, forgive me if I'm stating the obvious. But I talk from some experience, you can't just shift gear if you're pushing hard on the pedals, it takes a bit of, I'd say, mechanical sympathy, you have to ease off a little, shift, let the chain shuffle over and then push on again. I've ridden with some people who will hit the shifter and then ride for half a mile with the chain clack clack clacking and then say "What's going on?!".
Sometimes you can shift when pushing hard and get away with it, sometimes it won't move over, and sometimes everything will jam up like billy-oh. And then something on the bike breaks or you fall over and you break.
But, on the other hand, I've set gears up on the stand, that don't quite work on the road. So you adjust further. You don't just say "It works on the stand, deal with it".
And, on the gripping hand, sometimes something that doesn't work can be fixed by a new chain or somesuch. But as you've said you have a new chain (etc) so it's probably not that.
Oh yeah, I get you. It's not like I'm going up an incline and shifting gears. This is just on a normal flat surface and the current gear is pretty easy so I want to move it up. Before the tune up, and the 4 years prior, this was working perfectly fine. It's just now after it was worked on, it is not.
What's your price range? The options are limitless.
This is a great list though could use an update
https://www.reddit.com/r/FixedGearBicycle/comments/5oxfio/best_complete_bike_between_200_and_600/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Also keep in mind whatever you buy at the lower price range you're likely going to want to swap out at least the tires right away and maybe the pedals and seat some time in the future.
For $200 you need to buy used. Anything new at that price is going to be some pot metal junk.
I don't have any used shops near me anymore. How about just cheapest then?
edit: also if a 200$ gets me though one year that's just fine
craigslist/facebook marketplace then?
But I guess if you want something that you only need to last a year <200 is fine though I don't have any brand recommendations for that.
icky no. i have anxiety problems with those
i will just find a cheap one then. Thanks all!
A fixed gear is when the cog doesn't spin freely when not engaged allowing you to back pedal to slow down and even lock your wheel completely for sweet skids. These are often referred to as "fixed gear" "fixies" or "track bikes." Many also come with flip flop hubs so you can ride single sperd (non fixed) if you want.
A coaster brake is an actual braking system within the rear hub that applies braking pressure when back pedaled. These are common in cruiser bikes.
Many states require you to have a least one brake on your bike by law. I think coaster brakes count but fixed gear don't so you'll always see a fixed gear ship with brakes. Most people will at least remove the rear one and keep the front for safety/emergency. Keep both if you're in an especially hilly area. Removed both if you wanna be radical.
It's too hilly here for it to be a practical replacement for my current bike
Brakes are death.
Quicksilver and Premium Rush are required viewing FYI.
Guess the real test is when i can get it out to fill the tires and check the chain and breaks
But then it is known that I am Not Radical
@Magic Pink size charts will tell you what frame size you need. Just like clothes, most bikes aren't One-Size Fits All; you'll want to check standover height and reach at the very least because a wrongly-sized bike will give you all sorts of pains and problems. (My Surly for example is just the right size for me to ride comfortably for hours but if it were any taller then coming off the seat in emergency stops or whatever would really have him live up to his name.) For an inexpensive bike you can probably just check in person and ride it around a bit to see if it's comfortable? Unless you're planning to go for hours in the saddle.
I swapped Shucker's headset and stem for a Nitto/Chris King set in February and next on the docket is new drops. When I buy the new drops (purely for color aesthetic reasons because I am shallow) I plan to also do the tapes, cables and cable covers for brakes and shifters. Bike Shop Guy suggests I should take a whack at doing it alone, and I'd like to learn, but... how impossible is swapping brake and shifter cables? Am I gonna really bork it all up?
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Shifter cables are more difficult, but mostly because it involves setting up and reindexing the gears. It's completely doable, but it takes a fair bit of trial and error and it helps to be methodical. The Park Tool guide is very good and as long as you do the steps in order you can't really go wrong.
Do you have a stand? Setting the gears up isn't difficult per se, but it really, really helps to have a way to spin the drivetrain while changing up and down gears while making your adjustments. There's a lot of "tweak the barrel adjuster until you get to the minimum tension necessary for the rear derailleur to shift into the largest cog while in the smallest chainring" kind of adjustment
In general, I don't really get them, but I also don't really ride road or in the city much.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Fixed-gear, for me, was mostly because it's _fun_, it really reminds you that you're riding a bike for the sake of riding a bike, rather than as a means of getting from A to B. They're neat to tool around downtown / in cities with because you can get going fast and stop fast, and trackstands are super super easy on a fixed-gear which is satisfying in a sort of dumb way when you're at traffic lights.
I did it on the cheap, though, got a used 10-speed for $5, removed the shifters and cassette, botched the rear hub together with a cog and BB lockring and threadlock, and it was surprisingly okay. I actively don't recommend that approach to making one, I think it was mostly luck that the back wheel didn't come undone at any point.
I built up a singlespeed for mountain biking one year and that was okay but I wound up pushing it up more climbs than I wanted to when my legs gave out. Then I switched it to fixed-gear for a couple of rides, and that was more than I could handle, I missed the ability to position pedals to get past rocks and things, and having to keep pedalling on downhills was also just too much distraction on top of avoiding trees and such.
Make sure you have a good set of wirecutters (or you can use a Dremel with cutting disk) to cut the cables and housing with -- if you wind up with a raggedy end on the cable and it starts coming unravelled, everything will be super annoying to deal with, and if you wind up with crushed/snaggly housing, the cable can drag on it which is also a pain. Might be worth getting some cable ends while you're getting the other parts, though then you need big pliers (or a mole wrench) to squeeze it once it's on.
And watch a video / read something about how to rewrap handlebars, don't do what I did and just go for it "because how hard can it be"? (answer: well, my handlebars are all covered in the end, but they are _ugly_ looking)
Basically less upkeep and gears getting rusty and not working that require repeated trips to the bike shop
Also responsiveness and weight and more than a bit of ego, "you don't need gears you need better legs"
heck yeah, my main reason was to make cycling more of an exercise