RubberRetropack

Finally got my hands on a Surly Long Haul Trucker frameset! I’m currently just building it up, and in June I’m going to ride this baby all the way from my home in Edmonton, Alberta to Cape Spear, Newfoundland!

On my commute to work today, I experienced something very discouraging. It was my first time riding in -30C weather, and although I was dressed well enough to keep me warm, the ratcheting mechanism in my bicycle’s cassette siezed up in the extreme cold. It would frequently fail to engage properly, resulting in the bicycle not moving forward when I tried to pedal it.

This is the first time that my bicycle has failed to perform due to the weather. One of my friends suggested opening up the ratchet, flooding it with degreaser, and putting in a light oil with a lower freezing point instead. This would work through the winter, but the disadvantage is that the ratcheting mechanism will wear out faster in warmer weather, as the light oil is only an adequate lubricant at the lower temperatures, and doesn’t perform without the extreme cold. Also, this is a permanent conversion, as it’s impractical to get real grease back into the ratchet once the light oil is in there.

That was not an option for me because this is my good touring wheel, and I intend to put 6,000km on it this summer and can’t have it wearing out due to having inappropriate lubricant in it’s ratchet.

I remembered that my friend had shown me his fixed-gear winter bike, and that he claimed it was superior due to having increased control over your traction as you ride. I remembered riding it and thinking it was excellent, but that I still preferred having a choice of gears while riding.

Well, now that my ratchet has failed me, I see that I have no choice. I must convert my winter bicycle into a fixed gear.

So I purchased a wheel built with a Surly flip-flop hub (that is, a hub that has threads for a freewheel on one side, and threads for a fixie cog + lockring on the other side). Unfortunately, the shop was sold out of fixie cogs, so I bought a single-speed freewheel and a beefy 1/2” chain to use in the meantime, until I can get a fixie cog on there.

The conversion went extremely well. I replaced my 50/42/28 triple chainring with a single 40T chainring, and where there once was an 11-32T 8-speed cassette, there’s now an 18T singlespeed freewheel.

I find the 40-18 gearing a little bit high, with some difficulty climbing icy hills, so I’m going to try to find a smaller chainring to use on the front. And hopefully the fixie cog I ordered will arrive soon.

Advantages of fixed-gear for winter riding:

• No shifter cables to gum up in the cold
  

  Shifter cables are more likely to freeze up than brake cables since there’s less force acting on them.

• No ratcheting mechanism to freeze
  

  Fixed gear is always engaged, so the bicycle is always responsive to your pedalling. You can even pedal backwards!

• Beefy 1/2” chain endures wear/strain better
  

  The chain is a lot larger and stronger than an 8-speed chain, so it can take a lot more abuse.

• Braking is less relevant
  

  Having brakes on a fixed-gear is less necessary as I’ll be able to slow down and stop by resisting the movement of the pedals. Since my rim brakes don’t perform that well when they’re covered in ice anyway, this will be very advantageous. Some people are crazy enough to ride fixed-gear bicycles without brakes, but I’ll be keeping mine for emergency stopping at intersections and such. This is city-riding, after all.

• Better traction control
  

  Since you’re unable to coast, your feet can always feel what the wheel is doing at all times. When you lose traction, you can feel it directly. This allows you more control over how the bicycle moves and how you compensate for loss of traction.

All this, and the only real disadvantage is that you can’t gear down when you’re going up a hill. Luckily, my commute is relatively flat, so I shouldn’t have any troubles with it. Wish me luck!

One of the problems I’ve run into with winter cycling is that, even though it’s incredibly cold out, I always break a sweat from the exertion of the riding. Generally, underneath all the bundled layers of winter clothing, I experience quite an unpleasant moist/clammy feeling almost all over my upper body.

One of the gifts I received at Christmas was a Merino wool undershirt, a garment that claims to wick moisture away from the body, while steel feeling dry to the touch even when it’s wet. Well, I can say for sure that this works! Riding is now a much more pleasant experience as I no longer feel this moisture, and I’m altogether much warmer.