Subject: Re: Frontwheel Drive Posted by: Todd on April 27, 1999 at 18:58:29: In Reply to: Re: Frontwheel Drive posted by Robert on January 02, 1999 at 00:49:06:

Message: >>I'm curious to find out about any brands of experimental frontwheel drive mountain bikes. Do they exists? >>Any info would be appreciated. Thanks. >There are no front wheel only drive bicycles that I know of, except for a few recumbents. On conventional bikes, front wheel drive only will not work well because most of the time, when you are seated, 60%-75% of the weight is on the rear wheel and there is no functionally efficient way to attach a normal chain to the front, it would have to go through a lot of power robbing components to be able to make this happen. I do know of a two wheel drive setup for mountain bikes that is available, and there may be others I haven't seen. Here is the URL for Spicer Industries that makes the two wheel drive setup: http://www.evansville.net/~gene/. While I know first hand how nice two wheel drive would be on a mountain bike, especially for climbing hills, the Spicer system does not appear to be all that smooth. It uses a drive cable to drive the front off of the rear which probably adds 5 to 10 pounds to the bike, they don't have any weights listed so I can't be sure. Other disadvantages this system has is from what I >can tell the driving gears are external, so they would probably get easily gunked up and absorb power, it is real ugly and is real expensive. I recently saw a rowbike type thing, in a shop on the Pinellas trail in Largo , FL.. I think it may be made by Giant.It had a traditional rear-chain drive but when you push forward on the handlebars it gives you a single speed forward drive then the bars come back. It felt good for a fast, forward-leaning acceleration but I could hardly move with just the handle bar drive and though I could really feel the upper body workout, I couldn't Imagine doing the whole ride that way, but you should try one uot sometime. It is fun.