Originally Posted by Dr.PooLittle

I had an 80's Schwinn Sprint that I "converted" by simply hacksawing off the small chainring, ditching the rear derailleur, finding the rear cog that gave the straightest chainline, and shortening the chain. That gave me a taste of singlespeed (though not fixed). You can do that in like a half hour and it's not pretty, but it's basically free, so I recommend it. I had planned to follow through with a real conversion, but looking at how the money I was planning on dropping on tools and parts was adding up, I just saved up and bought a new bike.