[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 http://www.sheldonbrown.com/singlespeed.html.
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.
