OOPS!
Hey spelling police! Check out the previous reply. It doesn’t make a lot of sense because some amateur posted the reply to the wrong thread. It belongs in “Unicycle pedals /= bike pedals” and has been copied there. Sorry about the wasted space. No wonder Gilby has memory allocation problems.
I concur. I don’t have any friends that ride clipless, and we don’t have DH bikes, only hardtails, and rigids.
OT: Rigid rocks!
Caleb
could someone clear this up for me…the precession thing doesn’t make sense to me…
Wouldnt it still loosen the pedal???
the first animation on wikipedia, representing left crank/pedal viewed from left side…
Overall, the inside(spindle) is going counter-clockwise(moving the unicycle forward)(green arrow)
but it is rotating clockwise…(blue square)
so wouldn’t this loosen the pedal??
I like the “ball bearing” answer, but I see the “precession” answer pretty much, everywhere…so if it is correct, I would like to understand it.
This is a super old thread. But I just know that if I ride my uni backwards, both pedals WILL loosen off. So that’s enough info for me.
When you are ridng the spindle isn’t supposed to rotate at all, but due to precession even the smallest tolerance (difference of spindle thread and crank hole thread) results in a rotation opposite to the direction of the pedal (rotational direction of the applied radial force).
In the animation the green arrow is pointing from the hub axle outwards (like watching your left crank from the left side of the uni) normally the spindle of the pedal (blue) should not rotate.
If the bearings would lock up it would rotate …
SHOOT
here’s another wikipedia c&p:
“The right-side pedal spindle is right-hand threaded, and the left-side pedal spindle is left-hand (reverse) threaded to help prevent it from becoming loose by an effect called precession.
Although the left pedal turns clockwise on its bearing relative to the crank (and so would seem to tighten a right-hand thread), the force from the rider’s foot presses the spindle against the crank thread at a point which rolls around clockwise with respect to the crank, thus slowly pulling the outside of the pedal spindle anticlockwise (counterclockwise) because of friction and thus would loosen a right-hand thread”
Greetings
Byc