Freewheel Unicycling Megathread

Today’s ride with the freewheel felt really good:

Actually I try focusing on flowy trails at the moment, training to maintain the speed I get as good as possible.
It’s a awesome feeling if you (almost) only brake in order to control the speed, not the balance. It even starts feeling confident when you push little bumps on the trail and notice the additional drive it causes.

But sometimes I hit some technical trails I can’t resist.
But even those felt flowy today… :smiley:

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Thats a great video and your riding is amazing, can i ask what freewheel set up you using ,hub and rim? Ive looked into freewheeling gut fallen flat with mainly the hub sadly

Thanks! I’m currently using the nimbus drift trike disk hub. But there are definitely better ones, as you can see in the first post of this thread :sweat_smile:
Rim is a KH26 freeride rim at 47mm width.

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For those who don’t follow the “Pedals” thread: I’ve posted some raw footages of my “clipless freewheel” ridings. There are mainly falls and bad filming, but that could interest you :stuck_out_tongue:

Hope you’ll enjoy and that’ll give you ideas :innocent:

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Next time you should try it on some rocky terrain.

Seriously, that terrain + clipless + freewheel is just flat out awesome.

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Thanks for your kind word :slight_smile:


Some thoughts on brake pads. I had already talked a bit about them in the Pedals thread.

So, I had issues with organic pads on my last trainings. They were wearing way faster than what I would have liked and they tend to overheat when going for long descents. That means the braking power was fading over time… Leading to an almost impossibility to brake. On a freewheel, that’s pretty bad. :frowning:

So I switched to metallic pads yesterday and gave them a try on rocky trails. They looked to stay consistent over time for this first training (~ 2 hours). I haven’t gone for any long descent, though. Overall, I keep a good feeling about those. Let’s hope they hold in time! Next ride is planned on Saturday :slight_smile:

Metallic pads do tend to wear down the disks more quickly in my experience (fixed wheel riding).

What pads are you using? Something finned?

I’ll be interested to hear how you get on.

I didn’t know of that. I’ll keep an eye on my disc (currently, a small Qu-ax 160mm disc but I plan to upgrade to a 180mm Shimano SM-RT86 disc once I’ve received my Flik Flok hub).

Shimano D02S pads. Not finned. I was not sure it would change a lot of things, so I went for the cheaper ones. If they don’t satisfy me, I’ll order finned pads and put the D02S on another brake :slight_smile:

Sure, I’ll keep you informed there!


By the way, I’m using a Shimano SLX M-7120 brake, which is quite important here.

So a larger disk will also help to dissipate heat faster, without as much being transferred into the pads.

I suspect that moving to a 180mm or a 203mm disk may also have helped with your fade problem.

Finned pads do increase the surface area a bit for cooling, but they definitely do more when you’re riding at speed (on a bike) with the air rushing past them.

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I totally agree with you. However, I’m a bit afraid of going bigger as I have an RGB frame which is not known to be really sturdy when doing drops with brake fully-engaged. So I’ll stay as small as possible and try to find other solutions before using a 203mm disc :slight_smile:

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Ahh yes. New frame time? :wink:

Please don’t tempt me :laughing:
I’m already buying a Flik Flok hub and one (or two ?) new Schlumpf hub(s). Don’t want to spend more money into unicycling so I wont buy a new frame while the current one works great! :stuck_out_tongue:

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:open_mouth:

For tandem cross-alps I have gone pretty much into the science of disk brakes. One thing that I have learnt for organic pads is that (on a bike) you should prepare the pads by doing 30 quick stops from around 30 kph (after that you know what you’ve done). Then the pads are adapted to the disk. Afterwards it’s important to overheat the pads. This leads to the resolvents vaporizing which you feel in a loss of braking power (=fading). Keep on braking for a while still before you let the system cool down again. Next time you reach the same temperature the resolvents are gone already, so the surface of the pads is harder and by not vaporizing resolvents fading shouldn’t be so much of an issue anymore, either. Wear should be reduced compared to non-prepared pads. I also read a manual that explained how to do the overheating part with a heat gun but… did I mention that this is a whole science on its own? :wink: And for disks themselves: Use heavy disks, they can take up more energy for the same temperature.

In the end we brought the tandem safely over the alps without any fading but we used roads and low passes, for sure less stress than offroad use.

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My suspicion with disk brakes on unicycles is that the vast majority of riders never really manage to properly bed them in, so they never function as well as they do on a bike. To even attempt to bed them in you’ve got to have some good brake control.

The normal ride down a hill and apply the brake firmly a number of times works on a bike but not so much on a unicycle.

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Considering the price of the new M40 freewheel hub, I think some of you may be interested to create a thread similar to 📜 [Wiki] Schlumpf hub serial numbers reference?

Will it have visible serial numbers on its body?

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A question for @MAD4ONE.

Yes! Here the Prototype P-00002

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So I have tried Mad4One’s Flik Flok hub. And… That’s a total blast. Really!

We had the pleasure to have Marco coming to France this week end, in order for us to test his first prototype. We did some light muni with it to see how it reacts. When freehweeling, it’s very similar to other hubs. I haven’t noticed any rolling resistance in the hub itself. It’s really smooth, no issue there! :+1:
The fixed wheel has little play, but less than last generations of Schlumpf’s hubs. So that’s perfect!

FYI, the right foot lets you shift from fixed to freewheel whereas the left foot lets you shift from freewheel to fixed.

There are still some little issues:

  • the buttons are currently flat, which hurts a bit and makes shifts not always easy. This will be fixed for the next prototype with rounded buttons, much similar to Schlumpf’s.
  • shifting from fixed to freewheel is pretty easy, you just have to have some experience with freewheel (people can learn it pretty fast, it took about half an hour to my friends to ride a bit of freewheel this week end) ; however shifting from freewheel to fixed is much harder. In fact, there are only 6 positions for your cranks to let the button engage so the wheel has to be turning to shift to fixed. That may look like a big issue, but as you are freewheeling, you just have to let the uni roll and it finally engages :slight_smile:
  • the buttons tends to become loose. So you have to check them regularly in order not to lose them. Marco will see if some Loctite would fix the issue.
  • if you tighten the buttons too much, it will prevent the freewheel to work. That’s very similar to a Schlumpf’s hub: if you tighten the buttons too much, you won’t be able to shift. So that’s not abnormal and as you shouldn’t mess with the buttons everyday, it should not be a real issue :wink:

To conclude, I’m really happy with this new hub. It will unlock lots of possibilities. That’s the end of the famous question: “should I go with my fixed or my freewheel uni?”. And that’s really great! I think we could gain a bit of speed for some down slopes with the right training. I’m eager to have my own hub, now :smiling_imp:

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