Yep, gotta agree with jasmin on this one, the man has got a point.
Fixie is bulletproof, everything else might freeze, including the rims, so the cantis are a nogo.
Go for knobbies, the bigger the better, spikes are expensive, heavy and generally useless, and riding fixed, youl’ll start losing studs in no time.
I would go for karate monkey or inbred, but a soup’d up ESB would also do the trick, and prolly end up being sexier ride.
The main problem with fixed is that I have an unbreakable rule, and that is no brakes on a fixed gear. But riding brakeless in the middle of an icy winter is just stupid, surely.
During my 30 years of being a I have suffered a frozen freewheel once. It froze open. Freewheeled both ways. Annoying fuckerance. Other than that I’ve heard of one frozen freewheel.
Most winterbikers bike with their plain normal cheapo bikes with no problems.
There are no perfect winter bikes for Helsinki. Just get on the bike and learn. That’s what we have been doing since we were kids, with plain normal bikes.
Would it be better if people just posted here their winter(bikes that they ride in Helsinki during winter time) bikes like I did and let Ty decide what he wants for himself?
I like to ride in Turku with 26" spike tyres, full fenders and disc brakes. It is slow and heavy but I just hate the black ice so much. I have another fixed bike with knobbys for dryer snow days.
Like Kare said, it’s all about learning, until I moved here I’d seen maybe 10 days of snow in my entire 33 years. I’m sure it’s very easy if you’ve grown up with it but I literally couldn’t even walk around for a whole month last winter and I found it REALLY frustrating.
I need a bike that is going to get me to and from work reliably and I find it hard to believe that a bike without spiked tyres will work, I’ll just slip and slide all over the place, hit a patch of black ice, end up in the hospital unable to work and won’t be able to pay my rent.
I know there isn’t one solution that will work 100% of the time and people will have very different ideas from each other so keep them coming, it’s all helping!