heres my story, I started unicycling a while ago, living in venezuela finding a unicycle wasnt easy at all, i knew some people who owned one, but they were all really possesive about them…so i never got the chance to really try them, one day a guy came to the university with a flamingo, it was the most beautiful piece of machine i had ever seen, it turned out that this guy was studying abroad, and came to visit, he brought his uni along for fun, and for an intended muni ride…this was the first time i sa w a real unicycle, this was also the first time i saw a tacoed wheel, when he was showing all of the jugglers his skills on the uni…it was quite a shock for all of us, and we really felt bad about it…
anyway time went and i tried to find a uni, i also happen to study japanese and one day i brought the topic to my teacher given the fact that i knew of japanese and unis. and it turned out that the japanese school of caracas(thatsort of an all school for japanese people living in venezuela) had a few unicycles, i got all excited and called them. Soon after i was going weekly to learn how to ride. It was amazing when i first saw it, about 45 unis all pilled up, some of them in bad condition due to hummidity, they also had handdlebars which help me a lot... i invited some friends f mine to learn but none of them got quite as far as myself because of lack of motivation... the uni i rode there was no less than a miyata flamingo 20, i loved it because it gave me the impression of greatness of the first unicyclist i ever saw in action, there were also some 24 wich i didnt like, and some plastic rim unis.
more time went by and i learned to ride some distance and freemount, and then the oportunity to go to japan hit me (how to is a long story that is best for another day) i got really exited because i was going to get myself a uni…
long story short i couldnt find a flamingo and had to settle for a bridgestone 18, i actually rode half of stanley park, vancouver in that and was very proud at the time... when i came back to caracas, i talked to the japanese guys and they lend me the miyata i originally rode, because despite my afection for my 18 it was to small.... more recently, a couple of weeks ago i went back to the school to try and get some more unis for my friends, who now seem more interested...the point of all this long story is that i actually got another 5 unis from the school, of this 3 were the 24 i didnt like when i started, but now beeing more wise about unicycling i notice the bering holders, i know how everybody complains about lollypops, but you have to look at this they are the worst ever bering holders, i dont even know how to describe them, youll have to look for yourselves.
my worst fear is that since i got a summit more recently and im a lot into trials, and some of the guys i am teaching want to try that too theyll break them, and i have to go back to the school with a broken uni…
thanks for reading and enjoy the pic…
The lollipop bearing holders that people have been complaining about are the
Savage-style ones, which have a cylindrical stub that sticks up into the
frame tubing.
Your lollipop bearing holders look stronger than those.
To me it looks like these bearing holder stubs also go up inside the frame tubes like the usual lollipops, only they are flat instead of round, and the tubing is squashed flat to fit them. Yow!!
I will take the liberty of calling these “popsicle bearings” in honor of their flattened sticks.
Well it does look like the holder goes up inside the frame tubes. But that’s
not much different from the Miyata lollipop bearing holders, the difference
being that with the Miyatas the bearing holder is bolted onto the outside of
the flattened frame (rather than inside).
On the Savages, the frame tubing cracks because the bearing-holder stub
moves around in there. Unarueda’s look better because they won’t move around
(I hope). Hopefully the bolts squeeze the flattened frame onto the bearing
holders and distribute the stress over a larger area. With the Savages the
stress is concentrated on the bolts.
–Mark
weeble wrote:
> Mark Newbold wrote:
> > *
> > The lollipop bearing holders that people have been complaining about
> > are the
> > Savage-style ones, which have a cylindrical stub that sticks up into
> > the
> > frame tubing.
> >
> > Your lollipop bearing holders look stronger than those.
> >
> > *
>
> To me it looks like these bearing holder stubs also go up inside the
> frame tubes like the usual lollipops, only they are flat instead of
> round, and the tubing is squashed flat to fit them. Yow!!
>
> I will take the liberty of calling these “popsicle bearings” in honor of
> their flattened sticks.
>
> –
> weeble - There can be only one… wheel
>
> ==============
> Another Joe in MN
> Level 2 and holding
> ==============
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> weeble’s Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/1625
> View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/28138
But that’s not the main problem. The problem with Taiwanese-style lolipop bearings (found on many brands) is tightening a bolt onto a rounded surface (the side of the fork). And they only attach on one side. Pardon the expression, but this is retarded engineering.
Unarueda and Jagur’s unicycles have the bolts going all the way through, with flat surfaces to tighten down on. So assuming there is an actual bearing with balls in it, this is a far superior design.
