My first Swift was a 2006 I picked up on ebay. The seller had souped it up with drop bars and some fancy gearing, but I just wanted the stock build so he reverted it and kept his upgrade parts. I started riding it to work and fell in love, but really missed drop bars on those windy days & hated spinning out on the downhills. So I bought his upgrade kit and had essentially a folding road bike and a Crossrack for carrying stuff.

Life was good. But then my kid wanted to take the folding bike on a weekend trip, and he doesn't do drop bars. He begged me to revert the bike to stock for him, which I did. But it took hours, and I didn't want to go through with that again. Plus, I can't find studded 451 tires (and prefer the v-brakes anyway in the rain), so I wanted to have both. I suppose I could have tried to use Travel Agents with the drops and v-brakes, but my kid is taller than me and needs a longer stem plus this way we can both ride our swifts together.

So I bought a second frame and put the upgrade kit on that. Now I have twin Swifts: "Original" and "Crispy":



Original (blue) is a stock build with just a few mods: front derailleur kit, bar ends, fenders, a thinner saddle, and Ergon grips. i ride Schwalbe Marathons and have a pair of Marathon Winters for when it gets icy.

Crispy (silver) I built from the frame up.
* 451 rims with Primo Comet tires (1 1/8 rear, 1 3/8 front)
* Tiagra 9-speed brifters
* Tektro sidepull brakes (to fit the 451 rims)
* Shimano Capreo hub & cassette
* Shimano Hollowtech crankset
* Brooks B17 Imperial saddle
* Arundel Gecko Grip bar tape
* Shimano M324 "campus" pedals (clips on one side, platform on the other)


A few funny things happened on the way to the forum.
1) the holes drilled to mount the fenders was just a little too small to fit the brackets for the sidepull brakes. so I had to take a power drill to it (Xootr said I could w/o invalidating the warranty)
2) when swapping components I managed to strip the crank-puller threads on the drive side. the replacement crank was slightly larger than the original, so I had to file down the large chainring for a half hour to get it to fit.
3) somehow the right-hander brifter became damaged. not wanting to spend full retail, I bought a used one on ebay from a guy who happens to live 10 miles away. but it was broken too! so I paid for a brand new set. oooh, sweet having new shifters.

I love my twins!