A blog about skating and cycling, or vice versa

Half the gear, no idea#

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:00:30 +0000

Short shameful confession: I am halfway to owning a fixed-gear bicycle.

I say halfway. I am some portion of the way to owning a fixed-gear bicycle, but as yet it's impossible to quantify the effort remaining.

It's the usual story. When looking for a replacement for my Orbit I accidentally bought an early 80s Coventry Eagle (27" wheels) using Ebay - was expecting it to go for more than the £40-odd I bid. It's basically rideable, though the brakes don't really stop it and the stem-mounted friction shift levers don't provide quite the rapid, accurate, and above all quiet shifting that even cheap Campag Ergos have let me become accustomed to. So after riding around for a few days in an 81" gear I decided that I might as well make the grand leap and fixify it. Since it has a rack and full mudguards and drop handlebars and two brakes, I'm never going to get mistaken for a Hoxton hipster - though it helps also in that regard that I no longer live near Hoxton and more importantly that I intend to actually ride the thing, not just push it along on the pavement.

Thus far, serendipity has come through for me: I bought a new pair of (dirt cheap) 700C wheels that came with a 16T sprocket but that's been the only expenditure so far. The existing brake calipers have enough reach to contact the rim, and the rear dropouts are 120 OLN so no messing with cold-setting or spacers. And I found an unused chain and a pair of SPD pedals in my bits box. But then this afternoon I got to the point of removing the spare chainring and I found that there's no spider - the crank is attached directly to the outer ring so I can't move it to the inside and get a viable chainline. Then I noticed also that: the chainring is bent anyway; the bottom bracket makes ugly graunching noises; my socket set has gone walkabout and I cen't even get the damn chainset off anyway. So, it looks like this is not going to be a zero-cost conversion after all, and while I research the competing merits of Stronglight and Lasco (I really ought to get 165mm just to avoid the pedal strike spectre) my bike is in bits across the study floor.

I'm also tempted to give it a good clean and a T-cut treatment, but since its destiny is to get locked to random Sheffield stands all over London I'm not sure I want to make it any more desirable to tealeafs than I have to.

Anyone want some used-but-functional Suntour ARX mechs and shifters? I expect someone out there collects this stuff, but I have to caution you it's not quite concourse condition.