cbdesign

Hello and thanks for the warm welcome. First, the cable tie idea. I see two problems with it. First, I don't think that they will provide enough lateral support and will allow the cog to slide side to side. Second, one would have to carry a set of cutters with them and some extra cable ties if they want to swap out the cog. Hey, if someone wants to give it a try, I'd love to hear about it. As for retail distribution, I think you'll find the link to our local retailer somewhere in this thread. Just found it: http://www.singlespeed.co.za Did Eiger SA get his set of GearClamps? Hmmm. If he's in SA then he probably ordered them from singlespeed.co.za so I wouldn't have shipping info on that. Can they be ordered in plain Alu? I'm planning on getting some plain ones made that can then be anodized by the user. They really need to be anodized though, otherwise the tolerances between the GearClamp and the freehub are a bit too large. Thanks for all the compliments. If you are riding a set of GearClamps, please send me an email and let me know what you think about them. Best, Christopher

Hello all. I'm Christopher, inventor of the GearClamp. I spend some time every month looking around the web for comments about the GearClamp and found your conversation. To answer some of the questions that have been posed: Over the past year and a half over 750 GearClamp kits have been sold. Not bad for a design I came up with while drinking beers. A buddy of mine who is getting his PHD in mechanical engineering helped me with the CAD work and prototyping. We tested the GearClamp with 15 riders here in Texas, some were serious racers, some just casual riders. All of them rode the GearClamps for 3 months and of the 15, 14 had positive experiences and raved about them. The 15th guy couldn't get them to work... which is a mystery to me as they are pretty simple to figure out. The GearClamp (until now) has been produced for me by a metal fabricator here in Texas. They CNC'd the parts out of 1/4" aluminum plate. I chose this method of production due to it's smaller tooling/setup charge (but higher per-piece charge) as I was unsure of what kind of volume I would sell. Now, we are working with a new manufacturer to extrude the GearClamps like a sausage and then slice them off. Manufacturing the GearClamps this way offers two advantages: First, it has lowered our per-piece cost a bit (how this affects retail prices remains to be seen). Second, we can now work on prototypes for GearClamp v2.0 (don't hold your breath, I need to get v1.0 profitable first). As for damaging freehub bodies: We have seen nothing of the sort. the easiest way to mess up your freehub when riding a singlespeed is to use a cog from a cassette. These cogs have very little contact with the freehub splines and therefore "dig in" to the splines themselves (there's a picture of a beat up freehub shell in this thread). Singlespeed cogs (I like Surly's) are thicker where they make contact with the hub and therefore are less prone to damaging your hub. If anyone has any other questions, please send me an email at contact at gearclamp.com Happy Riding!