been lurking on this thread for months now and finally built up my own custom swift. after riding a birdy for the past 9 years i wanted something simpler with 406 wheels. kinda went crazy making a super light (super as in not bank breaking ultra) single speed swift. still considering making it into a fixie, but frankly, i love coasting.
so i picked up the frame personally from peter in Brooklyn on a business trip. that man is a saint. aluminum frame custom painted white with suguino cranks and single speed conversion kit. the fork is the Trigon carbon fork that kaito used on his swift. got it from performer.com.tw and they powder coated it white for free. the first one actually got crushed in the mail and cracked. george and nellie from performer sent me a new one right away, again a pair of saints. picked up the pair of kinetix wheels and white kojaks from dahon spares. they are incredibly light. the 74mm to 100mm axle nuts are from speedmatrix depot. the stem, guidonnet lever and cabling is from velo orange. nitto rb-21's, white brooks-esque saddle, titanium QR skewers, crazy light kcnc seatpost and white tektro 556's are all trawled from the ebay. funny thing about the front brake, it was about 2mm too short on one side and i thought i could get away with it. well, i didn't and popped the front tube and tore out the side wall of the front tire. the guys at my local (urbane cyclist in Toronto) fixed me up with a little hand milled front brake extender that dropped it down by a cm. they also dug up an orange stelvio tire that looks pretty damn sharp. finally the pedals are from fyxation and a set of straps are on the way.
as a final touch peter told me that tradition is you can only put on the swift folder label after your first ride. decided instead of just putting on the decal horizontally i'd wrap it around the top tube on an angle. has a nice swiss design touch to it.
now the only problem i have is that there isn't much more i can mess with the bike. had a really good time building this one up, guess i'll just have to ride it.
or get another.
oh forgot to mention, it weighs just under 17lbs.