advice for a fixie project.

mattbass789

I was just raiding the shed the other day, and i found my dads old road bike that he stripped down last year to make way for his new bike. so he can have both his winter, and new one in the garage. An old dawes from when he was 18ish i remember him saying. baring in mind hes nearly 50. :shock:

I am a keen road cyclist, and know a fair bit about the mechanics of bikes, and was wonder if i could turn his old bike into a fixie with a flip flop hub.
it has, forks - front and rear brakes, handlebars, stem obv. What would i need to buy and how i would go about building up from the frame to make myself a fixie.

cheers in advance.
matt

Pete Beer

What's the width of the rear drop outs and are they horizontal?

Has it a got a single chainring fitted?

turkeytickler

What Pete Beer said

+ another potential gotcha - depending on whether you want to run a rear brake or not (and on a freewheel you will have to)... older frames have nut fitting brake bridges rather than the modern allen key ones. from what you say, the frame muct be c 30 years old so will definately fall into this category..

It can be a real pain to find decent performing brakes to go on these... the decent ones tend to be deep drop, the others tend to be really old fashioned..... depends on your tastes i guess.... you could always keep the existing ones plenty of people do I just dont like the look of them but thats just my (questionnable) taste )

try googling "nut fitting caliper" to see what i mean

mattbass789

Right been doing abit of scouting now i had some time on my hands.

The width of the rear drop outs, presumably where the skewer would go for the wheel. is 5inches excatly.

The width of the Bottom Bracket is 3inches exactly.
The brakes look as if they are standard road caliper brakes, definatley not allen key fitting though, i wouldn't mind keeping these as long as they worked, so a decent set up and some good blocks should be alright.

It was originally a 5speed so only had one front chainring however, this along with the cranks has since been disposed of or is un-recoverable.

Anything else i should consider, im probably going for a flip flop hub if its possible to find one to fit.
Cheers for the help.

mattsccm

5 speeds were originally 120mm across the frame. Thats the same as any single speed wheels. Its bound to have a threaded free wheel so getting this off leave the thread for the single speed sprocket or fixed plus lockring. Drop outs are bound to be horizontal so no issues with chain tension. The rear wheel may need the rim dishing iemoving central to the fram although this may not be needed. Possibly spokes will be rusty and make this a pain. Tyres will be knackered or perished. Single chain ring at front will mean easy use as long as its not worn. The chain will probably match the chain ring for wear so as long as these are not too worn you may find they tolerate a new rear sprocket. Older stuff is way more tolerant of a touch of wear and they don't wear as quickly. Just re read the bit about chainset not being there. Use what you can get cheap to start with. A mountain bike chainset will accomodate a 44 tooth chain ring which is probably too big so no issues there apaprt from they tend to be wide. A road or track chainset is best. Old road one are easy to find and you have the option to run the chain ring either as the inner one would fit or the outer which is neater. Leave all the brakes as they are but bung in some new blcoks and cables if not silky smooth.

mattbass789

cheers for that, what i gathered from that, it seems it might be simpler than i first thought.