[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:I saw a notice for a bike auction nearby and thought I'd
get something to turn into a singlespeed (not fixed gear).
I'll be using it for around town trips. What should I be
looking for as far as a starting point? A mountain bike,
an old "10-speed" type bike? What about specific features
to look for or avoid? How about the wheels, anything to
avoid, or search for?
BTW, Yes I've been to seen
sheldonbrown.comsinglespeed.htmlOpen ↗.
Tom "That's too much detailed info at this stage, but will
come in handy one the conversion starts" in Paris
The best bet is probably to look for the best old bike
available that fits you with an intact frame and horizontal
dropouts. Road frames are generally preferable because
they're more built for the purposes you probably want and
are lighter at the same quality levels as comparable
mountain bikes, but if you find a quality old mountain bike
that's nice, fits you, is the right price, is in good shape
and has horizontal dropouts (unless you want to use a
tensioner), go for it. Concentrate on what will you fit you
for the bike's intended purpose.
Piles of random old used bikes available cheaply can seem to
offer way more promise than they actually do - the ratio of
department store bikes and overly trashed low-end shop-
quality bikes to everything else is high, and only a fairly
small minority of any random pile of bikes will fit any one
person well anyway. If you add on to this the critera that
the bike has to have decent wheels, you're in for even more
of a challenge because most used bikes have wheels that are
either completely trashed or in poor shape that won't stand
up to being ridden - and pretty much no used bike has
undamaged hubs. And this is to say nothing of other
components, although you have some latitude there because
you're doing a singlespeed conversion.
Most random used bikes that are going to be put back into
any kind of action really are best served by having new
wheels built for them. Wheels on used bikes are just too
crappy. Exceptions are definitely out there, and different
riders put very different demands on wheels, but believe me
that the general status quo is that the wheels on used bikes
are spent if the bike is actually going to be ridden much in
the future. For a single/fixed conversion, doing a good job
of re-dishing and tensioning up a random old wheel that was
built undertensioned without well-lubed spoke threads and
nowadays likely has a warped rim is really a pretty similar
amount of work to just building a new wheel, which can
actually be done pretty cheaply. Old high-quality cheap
freewheel hubs are all over the place. A whole new wheelset
is often the best idea, although the front wheels on used
bikes stand a much fairer chance of being able to get
somewhat close to an acceptable state with just some typical
truing than rears.
Before you take any bike home, check the frame and fork for
obvious sketchiness like cracks, buckling, bends, dents,
paint chipping that indicates an impact, etc. There's really
quite a bit to say about the skill of checking frames for
damage without allowing anything to get past you, but the
basics are to check all the joints thoroughly, and make sure
the fork isn't bent.
If it's a steel frame, you don't have to deal with worrying
about relatively minor rear triangle misalignment at this
point as long as you're resigned to either correcting it
later yourself (read Sheldon's site for the details of doing
this with string and a 2x4) or living with it. Keep in mind
that frame misalignment will mess up your chainline if you
set up the chainline in a way other than eyeballing
it.
