Hmmm... Well I don't think you've ever ridden an old school BMX bike which is reliant upon back pedaling for brakes with no free wheeling. Stupid and dangerous contraptions by today's standards but we're not talking about bikes prior to the 1980s very often these days in the BMX scene.bychosis wrote:Don't think you understand fixed gear. BMX has never been fixed, single speed yes, fixed no. Fixed has no freewheel, no coasting, no freewheel. An adult on a fixed gear BMX wouldn't be a fun experience either knees around the ears or standing up and full time pedalling? No thanks. BMX is not meant for that anyway.
As for bad situations, grabbing a few gears and mashing the pedals, that sounds like a recipe for a damaged drivetrain. I've done it on a MTB equipped with indexed trigger shifters - bent the chain, had to get a lift.
As to mashing the pedals, on a downhill slope one does what one has to do to cross across a bike lane where one has right of way in said situation but where the driver in question is completely oblivious to your existence. At speed I am no more likely to damage the drivetrain. In fact at those kinds of speed where you can't grab enough initial rotations of the cog on a bike you're likely to break your knees first before you're likely to break the bike. But one does what they have to, to increase the rolling inertia and get past a dangerous situation.
I have a set on a spare frame I've been using for parts at the moment, non-ridable condition. I haven't actually ridden a down tube shift bike in a number of years now because I haven't seen the point. The exact mechanics of anything tend to fall out of your head if you haven't ridden one in a while but have a habit of actually coming back from muscle memory once your on one.baabaa wrote:Have you even seen downtube or bar end shifters?
In both friction and also when in index you can shift from the smallest to largest cog or from the largest to smallest in one push or pull action. You don’t need to click,,,, click,,,,,, click,,,,,. Not sure how they slow the shifting process down. And yes as bychosis points out why would anyone want to mash gears like that anyway?
Can you please post a link or an image of a fixed gear BMX ? (Preferably in use and say a BMX race)
Oh and single speed mountain biking (with a BMX freewheel) is really quite a bit of fun but I am guessing you will have a solid opinion on that as well so anyone who does it should just stop it now?
EDIT: going through the motions seems to suggest they go click, click, click, rather than click once and shift through a whole crankset as you can with Double Taps.