Another thread is polling for the optimum uni. I love my 24" MUni for what it can do. I love my 29r for what it can do. I love riding Cokers (tho I don’t own one) for what they can do. I love my 20.
It occurs to me that since (I think) you can gear a 24" all the way up to a 48" uni, that your system would lead us to the all time ultimate Unicycle.
My math skills don’t compare well to yours, but it seems that if you could gear a 24 to a 36 then couldn’t you also gear a 24 to a 20? Would this hub withstand the rigors of MUni?
Can you imagine a crosscountry race where you could easily ride up steep hills, and then, with a simple switchover, cruise at 18 to 25 mph along the gravel roads…
I will be interested to see Harper’s reply. I’m not great rider, but my one attempt on BlueShift would tell me it wouldn’t work well for a muni. You don’t have that 1:1, direct drive control, which to me would be pretty critical for working obstacles, etc.
“Specialization is for insects…” Robert A. Heinlien
Tom, I think that Greg keeps short cranks on his Blue Shift, making it harder to ride than normal. With longer cranks it would be easier. This is according to John Childs, and since both of these guys are away on some fantasy ride on Vancouver Island, we might as well spread as many lies as possible while.
In 1:1 mode, it should be fine for Muni, at least for a little guy like me. Greg is a beast, maybe he will have a problem. Plus he jumps on to and off of anything that he sees.
The other mode is 1.5:1, so a 24 becomes a 36. Problem is the cranks don’t get any longer. Or is that the advantage? So if you had 6" cranks, when you go to 1.5 mode that would be like having 4" cranks.
Personally, I want to put one of these on a 20" as well as a 29".
It feels really weird to ride it at first, then when you switch back to a regular uni, that feels weird.
Keep in mind that shifting involves dismounting, busting out the tools, and tinkering around for a minute or so. Overall, not a difficult process, but it seems like it would be impractical for Muni, where the whole point is to negotiate constantly changing ride conditions. One of my main Muni challenges is seeing how much I can do without dismounting.
If I had to dismount and perform the shifting procedure, I think that would diffuse any energy built up in riding that segment.
Also keep in mind that the Uni.5 is designed for gearing up the hub and it sounds like your talking about gearing down the hub. The current design definitely doesn’t support gearing down and I don’t know if such a thing could be done.
One racecourse we have here is 1 or 2 miles of challenging MUni followed by 3 miles of rather easy singletrack and gravel road. On my 29r with 125s, I screamed through the latter but the former is impossible. On the 24 MUni with 170s, I feel like a bulldozer. The technical stuff is fun and doable but gnats pass me by on the latter parts.
I wouldn’t want to make that kind of switch for just a small portion, but for a mile or more, I think it would be worth it. Besides, Phase II will be easier to shift without tools. Have faith.
Ah, the mother of invention.
I tried the Blueshift once when it was loaned to Rhysling. I failed. It had medium sized cranks. I think I could’ve ridden it with 170s. (and quite a bit of practice). So gear it 1:1 for 24" MUni. Then shift to 48" Monster. That might be negotiable with 170s…
It could change the face of Uni. Just like my Sears 3-speed with the banana seat and sissybar did back in '68. (before that, I and my peers, were limited to one lousy gear). My Schwinn 10-speed in '72 was another quantum leap! My 21-gear mountain bike changed things again, opening up still more new avenues.
One racecourse we have here is 1 or 2 miles of challenging MUni followed by 3 miles of rather easy singletrack and gravel road. On my 29r with 125s, I screamed through the latter but the former is impossible. On the 24 MUni with 170s, I feel like a bulldozer. The technical stuff is fun and doable but gnats pass me by on the latter parts.
I wouldn’t want to make that kind of switch for just a small portion, but for a mile or more, I think it would be worth it. Besides, Phase II will be easier to shift without tools. Have faith.
Ah, the mother of invention.
I tried the Blueshift once when it was loaned to Rhysling. I failed. It had medium sized cranks. I think I could’ve ridden it with 170s. (and quite a bit of practice). So gear it 1:1 for 24" MUni. Then shift to 48" Monster. That might be negotiable with 170s…
It could change the face of Uni. Just like my Sears 3-speed with the banana seat and sissybar did back in '68. (before that, I and my peers, were limited to one lousy gear). My Schwinn 10-speed in '72 was another quantum leap! My 21-gear mountain bike changed things again, opening up still more new avenues.
Now I ride my single gear MUni…
What fascinations await in the future? Eh, Harper?
Aaah! I’ve come up with exactly the same question during my family/unicycling holiday to the Alps from which I returned this weekend. Cranking up a loooooooong mountain trail turned out to be quite a different cup of tea than cranking up those steep (really) but shrt Dutch slopes. But since it looks like I may see Harper in person in a month or two I had saved the question to discuss IRL. Interesting.
One point of doubt though on MM’s original post. Whereas 48" is the theoretical maximum (limit) to gear up a 24" wheel, this is not practically possible afaik, at least not with a single stage gear sun/planet gear system. But if the downgearing would work at all then to go down from 24" to 16" with 7" cranks would be fine enough…
About a year ago, someone asked if it would be possible to gear a Coker down from 36" to 24" in order to make a tractor that could crawl over anything. I thought that was a cool idea…for someone else to do. I think gearing down is not too complicated for a planetary gear system in a unicycle hub but I can’t remember. I also considered it before thinking about two-speed systems so I don’t know if it can be easily shifted to 1:1 like the uni.5 hub can.
There are alot of parts in the drivetrain that would have to be made bullet proof. There was alot of development time that went into the Profile unicycle hub although the transition from their bicycle hub to a unicycle hub/axle is quite simple. The number of parts in the Profile hub is pretty small. In a geared hub there would be lots of gear teeth and extra bearings to worry about.
Geared hubs for unicycles must handle large impulse torque changes and, as such, are necessarily quite heavy already. Beefing them up to handle MUni riding won’t make them any lighter.