Yikes, sounds you got cut worse Cougar, glad your okay.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon A.
I'm guessing that bike was a cheaply-made replica; I never had problems with coaster brakes.
I can appreciate the simplicity of bikes with coaster brakes and a single gear ratio, the downside is that they're a dog to pedal uphill. There are a lot of hills where I used to live, and although I swapped out my bike's original 2-speed crankset for a 3-speed, giving it a "granny low" if you will, I still couldn't take certain hills.
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Replica yes cheaply made not really. It has lasted the longest of all the bikes I've owned and is without doubt the fanciest (a Cadilac among the Chevys I've had). I've always been rough on my bikes.
I actually managed to destroy a coaster brake assembly on a $100 Walmart Schwinn that was a cheeper similar looking predecessor to my DelSol...The place I lived was a phosphate mine turned ungated gated community with a couple of sub-communities in it the bluffs and the woods which both had big manmade hills at their entrances. The Bluffs had a long straight road at the bottom and I liked to pedal into the downhill as hard as I could, lock up the brakes at the bottom and make a ~30'-50' skidmark...A few goes with the Schwinn and the rear end jumped and something was very wrong. I forget if it made me fall or if I coasted to a stop confused, but the bolts holding the rear wheel loosened or slipped from the torque and the brake bar going between the axle/hub of the rear wheel and the frame had been bent around like a pretzel.
The rear end was scotched...The wheel wouldn't move and the bearings/hub were coming apart and puking grease. I could pedal up both those steep hills I'd get up as much speed as I could and pedal the whole way...I'd stand when I needed more power then if needed I'd pull up on the handlebars to exert even more force on the pedals...When it got to that point I was usually moving barely fast enough to stay up and swaying with each pedal but I'd make it over the top.
I used to drive my bikes off road in some pretty weird places, I liked do brake drifting locking brakes into a turn so the rear would slide in a circular motion relative to the front (I once learned the hard way to never try that on gravel, then learned that old asphalt hides it's gravel), riding no handed (I got REALLY good at that), and I even learned how to hold a wheely indefinitely and pedal*.
*I decided to try that after seeing the Aisian guy from Mythbusters (his name is escaping me right now) do that on a similar bike in an episode that premered around that time.