Here's my situation:
I have a 7s, 126mm spaced road frame with semi-horizontal dropouts (well
maybe horizontal enough, more on that in another thread) that I want to
convert to single speed. I have a 7s Shimano cassette wheel already. As a
result, my original plan was to get a flipflop fixed-gear wheel, add 3mm
spacers on each side, and run a SS freewheel on it.
However, I've been experimenting with ratios and trying to find the sweet
spot by dropping rocks into the parallelogram of my derailleur so that it
can't shift out to the small cogs. I've been riding 39x16, which is a bit
too low for me. However, for SS freewheels, the smallest cog one can fit is
16t. Here are my options:
1. Run the 7s wheel with extra spacers and a single cassette cog.
2. Find a larger 130mm BCD chainring and run the fixed gear wheel at 16t
with that chainring.
3. Build up a wheel around a BMX cassette hub that can take cogs <16t.
The first is my cheapest and most readily available option. The second is
the next most desireable, since I could retain the dishless-ness of the
track wheel and the higher pawl count (or whatever it's called) of the SS
freewheel. The last is a bit of a stretch, since that would require my
ordering of parts and such.
Is there any practical reason not to do the first option? It's ugly, but it
should work...
--
Phil, Squid-in-Training