April 13, 2012

Jesse Hilliard's Retro-Direct Drivetrain

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I ran into Jesse Hilliard today and I got a chance to ride his retro-direct drivetrain setup. If Jesse seems familiar it's because he was the first to ever do a handrail on fixed gear way back in 2009 (Carney got the first video).
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Jesse's Retro-Direct Setup
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Jesse had never actually seen the setup in person, but he read about it on the internet and decided to figure it out.

Click here for the Wikipedia on the topic and an explanation

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The concept is that you pedal forward in one gear, in this case 50 X 20 and pedal backwards in a different one (50X16). Jesse described some of the process, such as threading a BB cup onto the hub and mounting a freewheel on that, or some shit. I don't really know.

Anyway, it works and it's fun.

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5 comments:

Matt said...

Jesse is awesome. Worked with him for a few months and he always amazed me. Sweet!

Anonymous said...

Team Dilly! I remember riding around with him when he got the first dropout proto. Wall rides on the Greenway!

Anonymous said...

I am digging the rear lacing pattern too!!

Al said...

Doesn't he also rock a gnarly geared Tall bike as well? I remember him try to do barspins on my Tall bike at Babes in Bikeland a couple summers ago! Dude is good shit!

EL PELON said...

Wow! I have never seen anything like that. (Learn something new everyday!) That is such a crazy setup.

WANT!