Fw On Front Or Back

[zoster]

hey!

would you recommend putting the freewheel on the front or on the back of street-trials 24" bikes (and why) ? what's your take?

thanks a lot!

[Jamie_Trials]

Depends if you care about the weight of your bike,

If you have it on the front I'm guessing it would be lighter as you always have a smaller cog on the back(and vis/versa)

But If you don't care about the weight think what's easier to access on your bike, I remember somebody having a freewheel on the back and it was a pain to get off compared to having a big bar on the end of your crank.

I vote front.

[Little Yoshi]

If its on the front the weights more centered so easyer to spin.

[Revolver]

If its on the front the weights more centered so easyer to spin.

Barely.

[Mark W]

If you run it on the back then you can run a slightly larger sprocket up front which will extend your chain life a bit and put less strain on your drivetrain. I ride brakeless so everything's reliant on pedal pressure, and because of that I switched to a freehub on the back (and 23:17 instead of 18:13/14) to try and help ease the load on my chain a bit. Ground clearance isn't such a big deal on a 24" bike, and weight-saving's also not the over-riding feature for parts, so it's less hassle than it would be on a 20"/26" bike.

If you're running a freewheel on the back, then a slight bonus is that you'll effectively get more engagement points. If you run something like an SL freewheel up front you'll have 108 clicks, but if you run it on the back with a 23t sprocket (which is the ideal ratio, roughly) then you'd effectively be getting 138 clicks per rotation of your cranks.