Originally Posted by
BCRider
You won't see a significant decrease in weight by going single speed. At best you'll remove a few ounces.
If for some perverted reason you want to go to a 6 x 1 setup then you can ditch the big front ring and the small granny ring and run with the middle ring and no front derrailleur. I've been riding a bike set up this way for years now and I can't remember if it has ever thrown the chain on the road at all. It MAY have done so during a trail ride but that is so rare that I can't remember it doing this.
In my case I did it that way because I ran out of parts while building up this particular frame and found that I didn't need another front ring for the way this particular bike is ridden.
You want a suggestion for a lighter bike? There is only one that is worth the time and money. And that is to switch the tires over to a set of 1.25 to 1.5 inch smooth slicks such as Ritchey Tom Slick tires. Nothing else you can do to a basic bottom of the food chain 18 speed bike is going to do anything worth while. But switching to such tires will give you an amazing boost for road riding. If you trail ride then sorry. There is nothing to do other than selling your bike and buying something more costly and exotic. Removing a few ounces here and there won't mean diddly. Being an 18 speed it suggests to me that it is a very basic bike that comes with a very heavy frame and likely one made using high tensile steel. Moving up to a much lighter and at the same time stiffer chrome moly frame is what you need. But at the same time you would likely want to upgrade everything else. Hence the suggestion to save your money and invest in a better all around bike.
I have to disagree with this somewhat. I took a 32 lb nishiki century and rebuilt it and got it down to 24 lbs and took it to a 21 speed from a 10 speed. It's an old high ten frame. Turning his hybrid into a proper single speed will absolutely shave a fair amount of weight. No front or rear derailiers aswell as no shifters is gonna take a lot of weight down. new rear wheel without a full casette will shave weight. Many single speed guys only go with front brake so eliminate rear brake and you've stripped a lot down.
With that said, I don't think this is the bike to do it to. if you want a light single speed, do what most people do and look for a beat up old vintage frame and just build it up piecemeal. I'm sure there are times when all the gears on your hybrid come in handy. simply removing your front derailer isn't going to take enough weight off and you'll lose the advantage of lower gears for the hills and tall gears for the downhills.
If you only do on road riding with your hybrid, you could probably shave weight by going to a threadless setup and getting a carbon fork on the front and regular mtb style flat bars. if your trek is the bike i'm thinking of, I picture a humongous quill stemm sticking up with big riser bars. a more road like front end would probably work wonders. Drop bars even to get you aerodymanic and set it up like a cyclocross bike could work well too. I know that a lot of the speed i'm getting on my new bike is from aerodynamic improvement now weight.
I don't know how clear the pics will be but the first bike is what ibought for $40. The second pic is it in a near completed state. I spent a few hundred but i went overboard. you can remove the cranks and get a single crank up front off of ebay for under $50. New rear single speed wheel for around $80. I went with nashbar carbon threadless fork which was $75 bucks, new stem and bars and headset were only $50 bucks (ebay again)
If your bike is anything like the one
here you could do what this guy did but it could start getting costly if you don't have parts already. going ot drop bars would be great but sti levers are expensive so you would probably want to go with barend shifters liek he did or downtube shifters.
I think there are a lot of ways you can go with this and there probably are some improvements that can be made to that existing bike but at the same time, it's probably never gonna be a world beater.