I&#39;d add that the the dinglespeed methodology has a couple of obvious glitches-<br><br>A) nasty, gunked up freewheel lock-rings that&#39;ve lived their lives being constantly tightened (hence the grunting and cursing associated with their removal). To hurdle this, a good overnight soaking with some penetrating lube greases the skids a bit, reduces grunting.
<br><br>B) Chainline: one cog of the dingle tends to line up super sweetly; switching to the other cog results in a less than ideal chainline. White Brothers have eliminated this phenom with a double crank/chain + dingle freewheel that has both a perfect chainline and two radically different gear ratios which utilize the same chain length (switch from a Big chainwheel/Small Cog to a Smaller Chainwheel/Larger Cog and Blammo- you&#39;ve got yer on-road and off-road bases covered). 
<br><br>B2) I think as elegant a solution (well, not as elegant, but sweet none-the-less) would be a tensioner- which brings us to...<br><br>...C) Anybody have success in crafting a classy tensioner out of, say, old SIS derailleurs? We&#39;ve chopped the lower pulley out of some of&nbsp; ours, but they&#39;re a bit clunky [though ready made for alignment- use the set screws to line up your chain under the cog; for fine tuning on the fly (or for a dinglespeed) you can &quot;fake the derailleur out a bit&quot; by routing a chunk of shift cable through the barrel adjuster and pinching it into position (fixing your pulley alignment with cable tension alone- don&#39;t worry about set screws). Then, when it&#39;s time to switch to the other dingle gear, you simply line up the chain under the new cog using the barrel adjuster. No tools from road to trail... but not the prettiest (or lightest, or even the easiest-for-the-average-amateur cyclist to dig into and appreciate)]. I tell you what, though: they&#39;re awfully fun. There must be a better way to add a light little tensioner to your single or dingle system (for those of us with vertical drops, or a drawerful of nasty old SIS derailleurs)
<br><br>Other Burning Q&#39;s I have:<br>-cutting new threads into the BB shells of old, cottered-crank Raleighs to make &#39;em compatible with new seale BBs.<br>-Effective (i.e., non-destructive) Cottered Crank removal (and re-usage)
<br>-ways to prevent cold weather pawl freeze up in cassette hubs<br>-Cheap lights for bikes (I&#39;ve heard tell of some creative holiday string-light setups)<br>-ideas for rust proofing/rust prevention concerning steel frames, spokes, hub bodies, etc... the stuff that typically looks drippy and nasty.
<br><br>Thoughts?<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 11, 2008 3:22 PM,  &lt;<a href="mailto:plan_9@riseup.net">plan_9@riseup.net</a>&gt; wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hey,<br>I thought that having piles of old freewheels might be a problem<br>common to bike collectives and wanted to see what folks did with them,<br>or any other non-standard uses for bike parts. We have just<br>&quot;discovered&quot; that you can pull apart a freewheel with two chain whips,
<br>one on the outer cog and the other on the third (the second is<br>sometimes also threaded like the outermost) and apply opposite force.<br>This usually involves two people lots of grunting and yelling, then<br>the outer most ring will thread off (sometimes the second and third
<br>are also threaded) then the rest just slide off. The lowest three cogs<br>are between 14-20 tooth which is perfect single speed range. So... we<br>have built up a couple bikes using a single chainring in front and a<br>
14t and a 18 or 20t threaded back onto the freewheel to make what I<br>believe are called &quot;dinglespeeds&quot; which is basically a singlespeed<br>setup with the option of loosening the rear axle, moving the chain<br>
over to the other cog and re-tensioning the chain in the dropouts<br>(have to be horizontal). This allows us to build up really basic, low<br>maintenance bikes that have both a &quot;winter gear&quot; and a &quot;summer gear&quot;
<br>(since we are in the brutal north) or I suppose if we actually had<br>hills or trails, &quot;on-road gear&quot; and an &quot;off-road gear&quot;. I know the<br>concept of a dinglespeed has been kicked around a bit in the SS world,
<br>but usually it&#39;s done with respacing a cassette w/ two cogs, which are<br>a rare commodity in our shop. Have other folks experimented with this<br>setup? Good results? We have only built up a few, and thus far it has
<br>worked out pretty well on the bikes we are testing it on. Also, what<br>kinds of other projects have folks done with either re purposing bike<br>parts in a creative way or modifying them to breath new life into shop<br>
excess?<br>Thanks,<br>Andrew<br>FM Community Bicycle Workshop<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Thethinktank mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org">Thethinktank@bikecollectives.org
</a><br><a href="http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org" target="_blank">http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org</a><br></blockquote></div><br>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Pete Rasmus Morsch<br>701.866.0962<br><br>Find the Fargo-Moorhead Community Bicycle Workshop at our New Site: <a href="http://www.fmbikeworkshop.org">www.fmbikeworkshop.org</a><br><br>&quot;Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.&quot;
<br>-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April, 1953.