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Flipcrown Helps Slim Your Bike for Easy Storage

Written by Steve Fisher
10 Comments
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Flipcrown bike hanging on wall

As more of us take to two wheels for our commute, Belgian cyclists-slash-designers Patrick Jacquet and Rob De Schutter developed the Flipcrown to make bike storage easier, especially for riders living in cramped urban areas.

Intended for commuter, vintage or cruiser bikes with either a 1” or 1-1/8” threaded headset, the Flipcrown replaces the headset’s top crown nut and enables the rider to rotate the handlebars 90º for storage and easily snap them back into position for riding. This makes it easier to store bikes in narrow hallways, hang them on walls, carry bikes down stairways, jam them into stuffed bike racks, and fit multiple bikes on car-mounted racks.

Flip past the break to see how it works…

Flipcrown installed on bicycle
The installed Flipcrown resembles an oversized top crown nut, but with a clever trick up it’s sleeve.

To use the Flipcrown simply loosen the stem’s quill bolt, push the locking pin down through the top crown and your handlebars are free to rotate. To go back to riding mode just rotate the handlebars back until the pin locks itself in place, and tighten up your quill bolt. Now you might be asking, what’s the point if you still have to loosen the stem? The difference is that once the Flipcrown is set up so its riding position remains fixed and your handlebars instantly snap back into place, properly aligned with your front wheel. It also maintains the height of the handlebars and prevents them from pulling out of the bike with the quill loosened.

The top and bottom halves of the Flipcrown are secured using set screws – one screw holds the crown nut in place, and two set screws secure the top half to the stem. Another cool feature is with your handlebars turned, riders can lock out the bike’s steering with a small padlock to deter ‘grab-and-go’ bike theft. The Flipcrown is made of CNC’d steel with a chrome finish, and is compatible with most headsets in either 1” or 1-1/8” sizes. Two headset spacers, a set-screw allen key and allen key tool for your quill bolt are all provided.

Flipcrown basic kit with crown, tools and spacers Flipcrown's combo pack with removable pedals

Until March 20th, the pair’s design firm, DeltaReference, will be crowd-funding for the Flipcrown on Indiegogo. The Flipcrown/tool is currently available for $30 USD, and there are several other combo packages available that include folding pedals, wall mounted bike racks, and even complete bikes equipped with Flipcrowns.

flipcrown.com

Steve Fisher
Steve Fisher
780 articles

Steve Fisher is a staff contributor for Bikerumor. Steve has been writing about trail, enduro and downhill mountain biking (plus a few commuter bikes) for seven years. Prior to that, Steve wrote for Whistler Traveller Magazine and Mountain Life Magazine. Steve is based in Pemberton, British Columbia, an area that offers plenty of challenging world-class singletrack and makes for great photos!

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Kark
Kark
9 years ago

I don’t know about breaking out tools after a run to the corner store, pulling pedals, cranking bars just so I can hang the commuter on the wall in the dining room.

..and by “i don’t know” I really mean “yeah, but no”. emphasis on the no, but I’ll accept that for some folks a commuter bike means something other than it means to me.

Other than that tho, I’m having fun imagining that the bike in the pics is a fixie and it has pedals with a quick release of some kind. What could go wrong?? lol.

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joenomad
joenomad
9 years ago

I love the raised quill stem to offset the flipped riser bar.

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joenomad
joenomad
9 years ago

And the hipster low seat post on an oversized frame.

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SwedishChef
SwedishChef
9 years ago

A bike that doesn’t fit with incorrectly mounted parts (slammed saddle, raised stem, riser bars upside down) – seems like just the right bike for a “designer” hoping to blow us away with another “improvement” to the bicycle.

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i
i
9 years ago

“…is compatible with most headsets in either 1” or 1-1/8” sizes”

threaded headsets you mean. Which are <1% of headsets these days, so not using the word 'most' in the conventional sense.
If this was a toolless way of rotating the bar for storage, I could see some merit. All it looks like is a over-complicated alignment jig. I'm guessing from the bike that I'm not the target audience though.

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sss
sss
9 years ago

Why wouldnt you just use the allen key tool to loosen the stem and turn it out of the way and hen use it to remove your pedals? One tool to do the job in about the same time without spending any money.

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haha
haha
9 years ago

I’m impressed they’re actually going to try to sell this. What utter junk. Bikerumor- please pick better articles. This is rubbish.

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Andrew
Andrew
9 years ago

Haters are out in force as usual. “This product doesn’t appeal to me, therefore it’s shit” etc.
There’s clearly a market, and the product solves a problem in a relatively simple manner. It’s halfway to its funding goal with a month left to go.

If the designers are reading this, kudos to you, please ignore the vitriol.

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Rob De Schutter
Rob De Schutter
9 years ago

@andrew, thanks, I realize that as one of the designers I should not react, but since they are taking on the editor, I feel a few words are in order.
1) I get that a lot of ‘bikefreaks’ don’t like products like this, but understand that Bikerumor is not only for them.
2) An absolute majority of bikes in typical cycling countries such as Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, France, etc. have threaded headsets, if you don’t want to take my word for it, just google image search the words ‘amsterdam bicycles’ and check out any picture. When biking to work I pass at least a hundred bikes each day. It is very rare indeed that I see a threadless headset. FlipCrown, is for mostly designed for urban utility bikes.
3)The combination of FlipCrown and removable pedals (I only remove the one that is toward the wall) takes me less than 15 seconds to get out the door. Without FlipCrown (which is indeed a tool for alignment and keeping the stem at height) it does not take that much longer, but it is simply a hassle. If you want to do it without, I’m not stopping anyone, but my guess is it’s too much of a hassle for you too.
4) Yes, we are working on a quickrelease version, but some people do not want to change the look of their bike with a quickrelease on top of the quill. For them we have the pocket tool.
5) The looks of the bike: I guess I’m a hipster, my apologies, it’s not a choice…

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Samuel North
Samuel North
7 years ago

Lots of play between the little adjustment thing you push, and the hole it goes into. There’s small but constant looseness between when you move the handlebars and when the wheel moves. Doesn’t feel secure at all. I’ve removed this because the steering just doesn’t feel accurate or secure. And the adjustment button is so small that I expected at any time that it would pop out and I’d lose steering completely.

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