CCR

gotta junk 80s schwinn world sport i was gonna make into a singlespeed for laps at the park.
(mainly for exercise but also because ive never ridden a road bike before and want to give it a spin without losing my wallet at the bike shop)

what kind of spacing problems will i run into on the rear wheel / rear stays and what do i need to do to make it work ?

(title says low budget btw)

also wheels are stamped araya 27 x 1-1/18, the tires are shot but i think i can still make out the lettering "for s-6 rims" - i know my classic schwinn cruisers, but didnt expect to see that on an 80s road bike tire, do i need "s" tires or not ?

JanMM

Araya rims on an 80's Schwinn should take common 27" tires. I don't recall any issues mounting a variety of tires on the late 70's LeTour and Super LeTour that I owned.

CCR

thanks for the reassurance on the tires

as far as the rear wheel setup, im guessing ill need to redish the rear wheel and narrow the spacing on the rear dropouts ?

?? does it sound like im going the right direction ??

tellyho

You can generally get away with moving the spacer from the drive side of the axle to the non drive side and redishing. This usually puts your chainline where you want it. Some more fooling will possibly be required. Check out Sheldon's site on budget SS conversion.

rhenning

If you really want to do it cheap put it in a comfortable gear and then don't touch the shifters for a couple of weeks. If you still like the single speed idea then and only then take off the derailleurs, the front sprocket you are not using and then shorten the chain. At this point you will have no money involved and can still put the bike back into original condition if you want to. Then and only then worry about other modifications. Roger

TimJ

No need to narrow the spacing on the dropouts. I have a 78 le tour III I turned into a fixie by taking 27" wheels and redishing/respacing them. The hub ends up about as far over to the drive side as it was to the non-drive side when it had a cluster on it.

Ex Pres 

To do this on the cheap the big issue is the chainline with the crankset you are using. You'll probably need to use the inner chainring position and adjust the rear hub chainline to it.

Measure chainline up front, spin the SS freewheel on, measure the rear, and see how much you need to swap washers from one side to the other to match the front. Then redish.

dsm iv tr

+1!

Easiest/cheapest solution, if you can avoid the temptation of shifting.

CCR

well, from the advice above, i could probly save money findin a different bike to start out on, derailers were stripped off already and chain was snugged for 1 speed. the freewheel cassette was locked up but rest made it out alright. bars gone, chain shot, tires shot. basically i was tryin to salvage junk for a beater road bike. guess i could always find one rideable for cheap and save some time, but i also like tryin to make stuff work, guess ill just have to see which itch gets scratched first.

thanks all

BCRider

I'm not sure that using a freewheel back end will work all that well but my own single is done on the cheap. It's using a freehub wheel with one sprocket from an old Uniglide cassette. A stack of the plastic spacers from two old cassettes are used to locate the single sprocket so that it is in line with the front ring. A metal yardstick layed along the face of the front ring and extending back to the rear soon tells you if the rear cog is lined up or not.

You'll want to do this using a freehub wheel since it is all the same size. On the freeWHEEL hubs there's steps in the inner core so it's more difficult to locate the one cog. Mind you with a freewheel equipped wheel you can just undo the whole freewheel and replace it with a BMX single freewheel. But then you can't move the cog around to line up with the front ring at all. And if you don't have the right alignment it may get messy depending on how far out it is.

CCR

solved the problem - ordered a surly (there went the low budget)