Further to Monday’s post, I have since undertaken a proper ride on the Homer complete with misshapen chainrings:
The lumpy rings in question are a 44-tooth Biopace outer ring and a 38-tooth Cycloid inner ring:
The innermost “grandparent ring” remains round.
Before going any further, I would like to address the following comment:
So height of the front derailleur aside, I was distracted by what seems to be evidence of chain lube (i.e. oil based chain lubricant widely used in the distant past, but now known to destroy your drivetrain, as noted in the “scriptures”) on your newly-installed biopace chainring. Ehem, not waxing your chains (immersive hot melt waxing that is)?
My cycling life is divided into the pre-waxing and post-waxing eras. Just sayin’.
The primary reason I do not wax my chain is that I am lazy. I mean I’m sure waxing is great, but I just can’t deal with one more thing to do to a bike before I can ride it. If I can barely muster up the energy to prepare a box of mac and cheese, do you really thing I’m going to work boiling a chain into my schedule?
No, my chain installation and maintenance process is as follows:
- Install new chain straight out of package
- If chain starts squeaking apply lube*
- Repeat as necessary
*[Dumonde of course.]
This works just fine for me.
More importantly, there is no reason in this case for me to preserve my drivetrain. Not only do I have enough oblong chainrings to last the rest of my life…
…but I can assure you it is humanity’s best interest that I wear them all out and render them unusable lest they fall into the hands of the ignorant and unprepared. See, when I first received all these chainrings, I joked about the dangers of mixing Biopace and Cycloid. Well, I never would have imagined it, but as it turns out this is totally true! In fact, the synergistic effect of Biopace/Cycloid combo on the Homer was perhaps one of the most potently disconcerting sensations I’ve ever experienced while a bicycle.
It all started out innocently enough as I pedaled along in the big ring. While I certainly wouldn’t say the world needed Biopace, I’ve never really minded it. In fact if anything I’ve always kind of liked it (particularly for big-ring riding, which is what I was doing), though I don’t know how much of that is due to the the actual attributes of Biopace versus my own tendency to embrace things other people don’t like out of sheer bloodymindedness. But either way, while you certainly notice the difference between a Biopace chainring and a normal one, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly jarring. Yes, it’s noticeable enough to be annoying if you don’t like it, but it’s not the sort of thing where you start pedaling and immediately exclaim, “What the hell is going on here!?!”
But shifting into the Cycloid ring absolutely made me exclaim, “What the hell is going on here?” During my brief initial test ride the sensation was of just of a sort of a little power surge at a certain point in the pedal stroke, but out on the open road I would compare it to any one of the following
- The slipping you feel when you pedal a bike with a threaded cog or freewheel that hasn’t been fully tightened, only it’s happening on every pedal stroke
- The utter weirdness you experience after an hour or two of ice skating when you first put your sneakers back on and start walking, only unlike your sneakers the weirdness doesn’t go away after you take a few steps
- Walking across the floor of a bouncy castle
- A particularly potent hallucinogen kicking in
Basically the oblong shape produces sort of a throbbing as you pedal, and it feels like your cranks are telescoping and retracting or something, but of course they’re not and so your brain doesn’t know how to process the sensation–like, it was enough to make me a little queasy.
The only time it went away was on climbs, when the throbbing phase of the stroke was well-timed for when you apply the most power to the pedals, and so the weird pulsing feeling went away and if anything it felt like the chainring was kind of helping, though that could easily have been my imagination.
Then I’d shift back to the Biopace ring, which is shaped completely differently, so overall the ride was like running back and forth between a wooden floor and a marble floor in your sweatsocks.
At this point you’re probably expecting me to say I removed the chainrings as soon as I got home, but I am an intrepid psychedelic explorer who does not fear the inner recesses of my own mind, so I’m going to stick with it and see where this journey takes me.
You really can’t go wrong with round chainrings though.