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At the risk of belaboring the obvious, freewheels work best when they freewheel in one direction. I’ve on occasion had the unpleasant experience of having them freewheel in two directions (a rather large impediment to forward motion), but up until recently never had the experience of freewheeling in zero directions. I pushed off in my driveway, and stopped pedaling so I could get my right foot in, and just about fell over as the chain proceeded to wrap itself around the non-freewheel, which was not turning at all. Couple more tries, couple times with the chain finally falling off, and I convinced myself I should ride another bike that day. As it turned out, that was a good decision, since it snowed later on and I was glad to have the mountain bike with the studded front tire.
I figured it was just a temporary aberration, so when I got home, I applied my usual first remedy, I whacked it a couple of times in hopes I could make it quit its evil ways. No joy. For a moment, I considered leaving it as is and trying to ride it as a fixed gear. I mean, all the cool people had fixed gears, and had been trying to convince me for years to ride one. And I do so want to be cool. But after trying one out for about 200 yards in a parking lot, I convinced myself that this would be just another creative way to FDGB. But here was an opportunity, I could try out my trainer fixed gear, and if I got to the point where my feet couldn’t turn as fast as it wanted to, the chain would just fall off. This was also a good negative reinforcement to making me ride it as an actual fixed gear, since getting off and putting the chain back on repeatedly was clearly more tedious than just trying to keep the pedals turning.
But reason prevailed, and I realized that trying this was bound to end in tears. So I took the wheel off, and slopped lubricant all over it. Then got out the chain whip and yanked for a while until it finally freed up. Fixed gear is not for me.
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