Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - well, its official. My fixed gear bike is no longer cheap.

It started out innocently enough. I bought a IRO mark V pro. I was happy. Then I bought a set of conti grand prix 3000s for it. Thats nothing, everyone needs good tires. But then I had to buy a new saddle. The slr was on sale. nothing offensive there. However next I decided that the stem and seatpost needed upgrading. I am now have a truvativ team stem and thomson post.

Was I happy? No...of course not. I now decided to upgrade to miche hubs and 1/8 inch drive train. Somehow, over the course of a year, my fixed gear has gone from my cheap bike to (I think) worth more than my road bike. What's wrong with me? This completely counteracts any notion I had ages ago of a cheap bike I wouldn't mind locking around town.

It is a disease people.

you obviously need a second bike to put the cheap parts on, so you can leave it locked up!

i put $1300 worth of parts on a $400 frame :))))) Just for fun, some day i'm gonna chain it up in manhattan and then just stand back a little to see if someone trys to jack it.

you obviously need a second bike to put the cheap parts on, so you can leave it locked up!

Although I respect this thought in principle, it would only work if I hadn't been progressively giving away/selling the generic parts to people trying to build bike who are broker than I am. In retrospect, you had the right idea. Luckily for me I rarely have to lock my bike overnight.

c'mon. ride it, lock it up, it's all good. that's what it's built for. i mean, look at what i do to my 3rensho:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/jkeisenh/september05035.jpg

that was pre paintjob though, do you still do that post paintjob?

yes, yes i do.
honestly, though, i think tree is probably better on the paint job than no parking signs... and the paintjob is ballistic anyway.

I used to have a "cheaper" bike. That became a more expensive bike as I started to upgrade. That bike went to heaven after a car hit me.

I now pretty much just have nice bikes. I stopped trying to have a beater. It's nice to ride a nice bike all the time. I just lock up super-paranoid like.

i just started my upgrades. *sigh* here goes my money.

yup. my surly was to be a beater - cheapie deore cranks, used parts rescued from Chain Reaction, surly hub rear wheel and recycled front wheel. 1 year later i'm riding on phils/deep v's, sugino 75's, thompson seatpost, etc. but it rides so nicely, and it's still my beater... it's fine for polo.

to me, it's more about the paint. because i find few other parts really get beaten, the way i ride. so, if you're careful where/how you lock, protect the paint, then who cares? it's not like most thieves know the difference between a steamroller and a bomber pro, much less the difference between surly hubs and phils.

i've spent nearly 5k in the last couple of years on things bike related.

Although I respect this thought in principle, it would only work if I hadn't been progressively giving away/selling the generic parts to people trying to build bike who are broker than I am. In retrospect, you had the right idea. Luckily for me I rarely have to lock my bike overnight.

Well, I was mostly joking... the new "beater" will sooner or later become "too nice"... rinse, repeat

I try to get around this by building bikes for friends. My dad has been expressing interest lately, maybe that will be the new beater...

c'mon. ride it, lock it up, it's all good. that's what it's built for. i mean, look at what i do to my 3rensho:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/jkeisenh/september05035.jpg

Those are the yellow conti grand prixs aren't they? The greatest tires I have ever owned. I got a set half price because no one wanted yellow. They go great with my special offer yellow crank brother candys.

Judging from the fact that due to my pre-existing bike lust I felt that the IRO would be a beater to begin with, I was doomed from the start.

I think this is what people in the road forum refer to as OCP.

same story. new tires, wheels, cranks, bb, chain, cog, pedals, saddle, stem, headset, grips.

only frame and seatpost remain from original bike.

i think OCP is about being a poseur, so unless you just look at your bike and dress like you could ride fast, i think its safe to say you only suffer from the common bike-upgrade virus, which is probably what drove most of us here to bikeforums in the first place

Those are the yellow conti grand prixs aren't they? The greatest tires I have ever owned. I got a set half price because no one wanted yellow. They go great with my special offer yellow crank brother candys.

ahhh, those are the tires I've been dreaming of. I wanted yellow so bad, too. Is that "deal" still going??

Those are the yellow conti grand prixs aren't they? The greatest tires I have ever owned. I got a set half price because no one wanted yellow. They go great with my special offer yellow crank brother candys.

Those should be Vittoria's of some kind, probably Rubino Pros since they come in all kinds of colours.

For all sorts of colours and cheap: http://www.biketiresdirect.com

I wanted to build a cnversion as cheaply as possible just to try out the fixed thing and find out if I like it. I started stripping the frame, I was just gonna order a wheel, lockring, and cog, but before it was done I had replaced most of the parts except handlebars, stem, front wheel, and front bake. The bars were too flexy, so I replaced those. know what I'm shopping for now? right a frame. in a years time I doubt if there will be a single part from the original conversion. Well... maybe the stem the stem is nice ;)

good call, absntr, vittoria's indeed. diamante pro rear, rubino front. they're slippery when skidding but tough as nails.

ahhh, those are the tires I've been dreaming of. I wanted yellow so bad, too. Is that "deal" still going??

Nope, I got them about 8 months ago. They had three and I bought them all.


My understanding of OCP is a tad bit vague. I know that the acronym stands for obsessive compulsive poseur. However, I beleive that all of those people can actually ride quite well. I don't think you have to just be a poseur, I think that you just need to love the way your bike looks.

They however have complicated sets of bylaws and the whatnot.

This should clear up any confusion about OCP. It's nice to see a sense of humor in the road forum. http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=106114&highlight=ocp+club+rules

it's definately a fever!!

~JG

whoever said SS and fixed are cheap is a liar

Heh. I didn't have a budget when I started, I just took the singlespeed I had and bought a wheel/cog/lockring. I think it cost me about $120. I don't have a single thing still on that bike that I originally built it with, and I've swapped the parts between 4 or maybe even 5 frames now.

The wheel I started with (Van Dessel) is now on it's third owner, and still going strong. I think one spoke has been replaced, and the ding I put in it on the worst pothole I've ever hit is still there. The last things remaining were the chainring cog and wheel, and they all went at once.

I'm getting the upgrade bug for the convert. I'd love some Record carbon brake levers and a new front wheel, maybe rebuild the rear with double butted spokes. Still probably stick with MA-3's, but I do have an old Open Pro sitting out in the shed. Just got a new stem on it. Bars are the only thing that probably need to go. They're too narrow and were the stockers on the bike when I bought it as a roadie in '98. Oh, and more trick pedals if we're just dreaming here. Some CX-6s with chromoly spindles.

But it kicks ass as is, so I'm not in a hurry.

This all is rather depressing... seeing as I just convinced myself that I could save by buying a used frame (Which I did, 80 bucks on ebay), and the rest from IRO and my lbs... if I stick to the promise I made myself, I will stay under the 550 it would have cost me to buy a Mark V... Yeeeah... we'll see about that....

Got this guy for 75, wheels/cogs for about a hundred. Now I'm like, ok need a saddle I can drop back another cm or two, thinkin about getting a Brooks for the fancycommuterbike and dropping the SLR to the dangerbike, if I got a Phil bb it'd still look fugly but ride buttery for years, so I can justify that, and then once I was buttery there it'd just get frustrating creaking around the current headset so that would probably happen.


Tomorrow will try and put some old ritchey ergo/drop bars on DUI-style with one of them Wald baskets.


I like evolving bikes. I mean, who says, ok, this is my bike, I shall now change nothing? Nobody I wanna know.

I got a really sweet deal on my KHS (thank you school cycling team) and then the hubs stripped. I thought it would be fun to upgrade to Phil's and ended up spending more on a set of wheels than I did on my entire bike in the beginning. Ah, the irony.

My original fixie was expensive the moment I bought the ENO hub. It then got worse with the Marin frame, and when I picked up the Basso frameset it was really all over. I have only one bike, and minimal extra parts, so I have no motivation to pick up something cheap to build a second bike on. What I DO want, though, is a Nessuno with S+S couplers, a Level hubset....