I was wondering, will a 24" guni that’s geared up to coker size be able to keep up with a coker(s)?
also, will you need longer cranks to keep it controlled?
I was wondering, will a 24" guni that’s geared up to coker size be able to keep up with a coker(s)?
also, will you need longer cranks to keep it controlled?
Yes. Without riders they will be stationary. They will go the same speed…zero.
I don’t know but if I ever got a whole bunch of money all the sudden I would want to gear up my muni with that new splined geared hub. That would be the best combo of a geared uni for me, I don’t do long distance but it would be nice to be able to ride to some farther away spots and still have a strong uni to play on when I get there:)
if it is geared the up to be as fast as a coker than it will go as fast as a coker. i would like to see a geared up coker that could go really really fast
Given the same rider and the same length cranks, I’d expect a coker to be slightly faster than a small uni geared up to coker size. Geared unicycles are nice, but you don’t get 100% of the way to the wheel size, because you’re missing other things that the coker does.
Like Spencer says, they’re great for getting you to the trails to ride, but they aren’t as nice as a big wheel for just riding distance, require a fair bit more concentration.
They do have some advantages over a coker though, other than being okay for muni once you get there, they’re light compared to a coker, which is a nice thing and makes it quite easy to flick around.
Joe
I’ve not ridden a Guni but I’d expect the coker to be a fair bit faster. The 24" would probably still be able to go along at quite a rate, but the extra stability and bump-handling provided by the Coker’s big wheel would make it easier to maintain a high speed for useful distances.
On the other hand, the guni would retain the 24" light weight so it’d be easier to flick the thing about.
I’ve ridden Kris Holms geard muni, and I’ve ridden a coker, but both for less than 5 minutes total so I couldn’t really tell much about the differences…
One thing for sure, it’s weird to be going fast on long(ish) cranks! But I’m sure it could keep up with cokers, except in an all out race. Because really, it won’t be all that much slower, and who rides a coker as fast as they can possibbly can anyway?
I think harper’s blueshift is a geared up coker.
thanks for the info.
Blue Shift is a geared-up 29er. Mike Scalisi has a geared-up Coker based on one of Harper’s hubs. The geared-up Coker is quite scary at speed, and Ken Looi got his compound fracture on a fall from a geared-up 29er. I think we’re already stretching the limits of prudence.
thanks.
Interesting how almost no one answering so far has any experience with a geared uni.
The answer is that a Coker would be faster, all other things being about equal. A geared uni has a lot more momentum to overcome due to the gearing. When I ride my guni, which is a geared 29", it’s really hard to push the pedals in high gear. The same phenomenon would be observed, to a lesser extent, in a 24" guni. The other thing is that my guni is heavier than it looks due, among other things, to the heavy hub and the sturdy frame it necessitates. I’d guess it’s not much lighter than a Coker, if at all, so you’re not going to make up a big difference there.
I’ve ridden uni.5 (Harper’s first geared uni), which was a 24" geared to ride as a 36". It was a good deal slower than my Coker, even when I rode down a long downhill.
Ok, from someone who has ridden both a 29’er Sclhumpf and a Coker…
On the flat a Schlumpf 29’er is definitely faster. I was about 2-3secs faster per minute on the 400+m circuit I used for my 24hr record on the Sclumpf 29’er with 125mm cranks compared with the Coker with 102mm cranks.
For uphills and downhills it depends how much up and down there is and how fast you are at shifting gears. I estimate that even a fast shift will lose you about 50m compared to a Coker. You have to slow down, shift, then speed up to catch the Coker.
Interesting note- the Marathon Road race and 10km Road Race at Unicon 13 were both won on Cokers. In fact, the fastest Schlumpf (Tony Melton riding my 29’er) was in fifth place, behind four Cokers. Same with the 10km race. I think that was more due to the fact that shifting the 29’er would lose you 50m to a Coker, so Tony only shifted once during the entire race. Essentially it means he was riding a 46" wheel almost the entire time. I think I could have gone faster on my Schlumpf, but I’m pretty slow at shifting and also most of the fast guys were on Cokers so I guess we wanted to keep things fairly even. It was a fun race.
Ken
I’m sure my Schlumpf weighs significantly less than my coker, even with the super-sturdy frame I’ve got on mine. The coker is almost all stock, but I don’t think you save that much weight by using an airfoil rim on the coker. I’d guess the difference in tyre weight between coker and 29er is significantly more than the difference in hub weights.
The KH schlumpf won’t need the silly frame because of the bearing holder design, so the only difference in weight over the KH muni should be the hub.
Like Ken says, the Schlumpf 29er is a little faster than a coker on the flat. I’d say nowhere near as much faster as the 45" / 36" ratio would suggest though, which is why I agree with David that the Schlumpf 24 which would gear up to only just over 36" would be slower than a coker.
Incidentally, I dunno if Roger’s changed his mind, but a couple of weeks back he was saying that he didn’t reckon the geared up coker (36" geared to 54") was up to much, and that he was actually faster on an ungeared coker. Was he one of those front four cokers at unicon by any chance?
Joe
Sorry, bit of a thread jack, but…
I would imagine a geared DOWN coker would be quite useful (with 1:1 drive and a lower gear instead of the 1.5:1). Schlumpf make a geared down version of their bike bottom bracket, so I wonder how much it would take to do a unicycle hub like that… perhaps there wouldn’t be the demand to make it worth the effort. Most people seem to think a direct drive 36" wheel is a high enough gear, but it would be good to be able to change down for a hill.
But having ridden neither a coker nor a guni I’m not best qualified to comment :o
Rob
Yeah, Roger was one of them. He was going ‘slowly’ under doctors orders after breaking his wrist, though.
Here’s the medics keeping a close eye on his speed:
When Roger says he’s going slow don’t believe it
The marathon was an awesome race- yes, Roger was one of the 4 Coker riders at the front- we held a little peleton for most of the first and second laps. Just like bike racing only better!
That picture is from track racing though, not the Marathon. It doesn’t look like a Coker. I think it is the 700c 1500 m race.
And Rob Northcott: Florian Schlumpf told me during UNICON that a geared-down Coker is being considered, but it will still take two years or so due to other priorities such as the splined geared-up hub.
Klaas Bil
Funnily enough, I spoke to Florian last week and he said that one of the first questions he was asked when he released the product was ‘could you use it to gear down a unicycle’. He said that while ratios of less than one were possible, the cost of producing different hubs meant that at the moment he could only offer one ratio, as there was not enough market demand to cover the development costs of two different hubs. He did say that if enough of the current hubs sold then he would have the budget in the future to develop and sell hubs of different ratios, possibly including a down gearing.
A few more spcifics:
When I rode my Coker to work in the past, the 8.4-mile trip took just under 45 mins. On my guni, riding only in high gear, the same trip has taken me as little as 37:45. Clearly the Schlump has cut time on the relatively long straightaways, even when they’re hilly (for example, the Brooklyn Bridge is now under 6 mins of the trip, wheras it used to take just over 7). A Coker is faster for the limited street/sidewalk riding that I have to do for this commute, but thankfully that isn’t much of the trip.
More specific specifics: my top Coker speed was 21mph when riding with 110mm cranks. Riding the same downhill on my 29" guni with 125s, my max speed was ‘only’ 22. As noted earlier, this was not as large a jump as might have been estimated (I thought I’d be able to hit 24 or 25).
Re: 24" Gunis (geared unis)
On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 23:22:45 -0500, mornish wrote:
>I was wondering, will a 24" guni that’s geared up to coker size be able
>to keep up with a coker(s)?
I have ridden both a Coker, and a 24" Schlumpf (which has a virtual
diameter slightly more than a Coker, i.e. about 37" versus the 36" of
a Coker).
The answer to your question would depend on the crank length, and on
the experience the rider has on both unis But in general I would say a
Coker is faster because it is more stable.
“I’m slowly but surely stealing Wales and bringing it back to my house on the wheel, frame and cranks of my muni. - phil”