Has anyone toyed with the idea of making a unicycle like a bike in asence that you can pedal forwards and when you stop pedaling you just coast and can’t really ride backwards?
I mean… obviously you would have to mount a brake on it, but i was wondering ifthe theory has been tested…
Yes it has…by Joe maybe?
P.S. How long is that animation going to stay in your signature line? 
Really? I would desprately like to see a vid. of it ridden. PLus, how hard would it be? It just seems like a really practical idea for commuting.
As long as it takes, andrew. As long as it takes.
On the video I saw the person who I think was Joe got 5m or so but then stopped pedaling (for fun I assum) and did a pretty fun looking dismount.
P.S. Oh God, they’re multiplying!
Re: free rotating wheels?
Yes, there have been a couple of unicycles like that brought to various USA conventions. I’ve heard them called coaster unicycles. They’re a novelty unicycle. Very hard to ride. I’m not crazy enough (or good enough) to try one, but I enjoyed watching some of the expert level freestyle unicyclists try to ride them.
One was brought to the convention in North Bend Washington in 1999. It was made from a coaster hub with an integrated drum brake. It was the kind of bike hub where you backpedal to activate the brake. People were more successful riding it up a slight incline. Downhill would be suicide. On level ground (as in a gym) it was obviously quite difficult to ride. I didn’t see anyone go much more than about 20 feet on it in the gym. When you backpedal there was quite a bit of slop before the brake was actually applied. During that period of “slop” you would be truly coasting.
XWonka, isn’t what you’re describing essentially what bicyclists do when they do wheelies? Just get rid of the front half of the bike, and there you go.
I’ve read some articles on those. Some people have made those out of normal bicycle parts. It shouldn’t be too hard to make one yourself if you’ve got enough tools.
Re: free rotating wheels?
XWonka <XWonka.uerj0@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:
>Really? I would desperately like to see a video of it ridden. Plus,
>how hard would it be? It just seems like a really practical idea for
>commuting.
A forward only drive standard unicycle with a brake would probably be no
harder to ride than a unibike and maybe easier due to the simpler weight
distribution. The coasting part would still be very hard though,
assuming one wants to coast, since coasting is not required with the
addition of a brake.
Sincerely,
Ken Fuchs <kfuchs@winternet.com>
… theoretically speaking:
would it be possible to make a free wheel that could lock in by means of electronics? i’m thinking that it would be highly unfeasible and ridiculously impractical, but so was the computer at its inception.
so you can disengage your cranks when you feel like it, and when you want to pedal again, you do, while engaging it (by a button and wire?) and the computer would sense when you were pedaling as fast as the wheel was spinning so it would lock up again. i’d assume there’d be a brake too, to slow you down where you can begin pedaling.
so what do you think? it’d probably be a pretty big hub/axle setup, but would it work, on the lowest theoretical with the best technology?
nosabe332 wrote:
Yes it would be but it would require quite a much room because the locking with electrics would require quite a much power to work fast enough.
Re: free rotating wheels?
“joona” <joona.ugl9r@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote in message
news:joona.ugl9r@timelimit.unicyclist.com…
>
> nosabe332 wrote:
>
> > would it be possible to make a free wheel that could lock in by means
> > of electronics? i’m thinking that it would be highly unfeasible and
> > ridiculously impractical, but so was the computer at its inception.
>
> Yes it would be but it would require quite a much room because the
> locking with electrics would require quite a much power to work fast
> enough.
I used to work with big high speed line printers, that had a magnetic
clutch/ brake assemble, activated by (I think) 12 volts DC. I have
occasionally wondered whether these things might have a uni application,
they worked very quickly, and we used them in a stop start mode with about
20 cycles per second. The 12 volts were applied hard on, but with a lower
voltage I guess the magnetic dust in these things might cloy more gradually.
Don’t know how easy they would be to install, if they even proved to be
suitable version available. One for the mechanics amongst us maybe?
The magnetic devices or motors won’t necessarily take too much room. It’s the battery that causes problems. It might take quite a big current to make them work. I suppose those
magnetic brakes didn’t work with batteries.