so I’m recently back from a 6 week honeymoon in America and have fallen in love with fixed wheel riding. After spending the past 18 years riding a road bike, I’ve decided to convert one of my older bikes into a fixie. I don’t plan on asking newbie questions to annoy you all. instead I’ll slowly post pics as things happen.
the donor frame is an old 1994 Giant CFR2 in perfect condition. the geometry from what I can gather through research isn’t to far off being acceptable. if I still had my custom built Mitchell I’d be using that, but alas a ute broke me and it in numerous places a long time ago.
measurements in cm
head angle 17 or 73 degrees (depending on your 0 point)
seat angle 17 or 73 degrees (depending on your 0 point)
effective top tube 57
chainstay 40.8
bottom bracket 26
offset 4.5
wheelbase 90
seat tube 59
head tube 15.5
crank length 17
first things to look for will be the gear set and a new rear hub. I’m looking to initially run a flip-flop hub (42/15), will probably buy it online as I’m not sure of the local stores that stock this gear YET. The current deep v rims would come up a treat with a lick of paint, so no need to replace them. then I’ll be engineering the track ends to replace the current vertical drop outs.
hell if you can engineer anything rather than just bitch and nit pick like the rest of us around here no go ahead use the road frame… i have ridden both track and road frames and a track frame is tighter and more twitchy which is nice and responsive but for hakin aroujnd on the street anything goes a good wheel set, cranks, and bars of your desire ( dont mention bullhorns here) and presto we all get to comment… keep us all posted…fuk i wish i could engineer/weld/man stuff…
at this stage I’m going to lower the rear mount by about 2cm and shorten the wheel base about 1.5cm. I’ll CAD it first to make sure it doesn’t look lame. if this frame doesn’t work out, there’s plenty of curb side collections coming up in brisbane.
I’ve not done the math yet as to the angles I’m going to be left with elsewhere. that’s something for another day.
sounds awesome, it would be great to be able to weld
by the way, can someone explain the general aversion to bullhorns around here? NOT THAT I PALP THEM!
so the plan is to strip this bike back and remove all of the paint and giant labels. I’m hoping with a simple clear coat and polished lugs, white vees and white rubber it should look pretty ace. still deciding on handle bars, maybe a set of bull horns.
front end
rear end
selle royal bum hugger
soon to be modified drop outs
time to go crack a beer, open up the CAD program and begin dreaming. I really love the look of these two different track end styles:
yeah paul’s stuff is fantastic. the ones in the pale blues are the same ones you have shown uninstalled.
I’ve been pricing up flip-flop hubs and the cheapest I can see is a velocity for about $80-100 at various places around Australia. Anyone else seen a better price on a half decent flip-flop hub?
At that price I might as well machine my own. If I do, I could easily run off numerous others at a later time - if there was enough interest after seeing what I end up with.
thats a shame for your mate. this one has served me well since 1994 with only the rear dérailleur needing to be replaced once (aside from regular maintenance items). touch wood it’ll see me through to September next year when I’ll bring back an Aristotle (republic bike) from Florida with me.
so I eventually got around to getting it done. in amongst building out the nursery for our new addition and other assorted projects. still yet to strip the colour off the wheel and dial things in, but I took it for a spin and it feels nice.
