I have used Japanese (and similar) early to mid-80s mid-quality road frames for winter,rain,city fix gears forever. Pluses - horizontal dropouts with screw adjusts, fender eyes, often designed for 27" wheels and accommodate large tires and fenders easily. All threads and dimensions are English sized, standard metric threads and traditional tube diameters. Makes moving parts from one frame to the next easy. (Often done over one weekend to get my freshly crashed commuter up and running for Monday. Every part will go from a Japanese built Schwinn to a Sekine. No trips to the bike shop to make it work. This was one example. That commuter went on to become a Miyata 610 and is now an '83 Trek 420.)

Another plus is that those bikes are all lugged and brazed. If you get one taht is really sweet (ie, fits the way you ride and does what you want perfectly) and something happens to the frame, getting a repair that will leave it good as new is not hard. My current Trek is one of those bikes. Best winter/rain/city bike I have ever owned in almost every way. It is an older steel Trek and the failure they were known for happened. (Cracked seat tube caps across the deeply stamped "TREK".) An afternoon's work that included new WB bosses and a powdercoat paint job and the bike is ready for another 20 years.)

BB height on all these bikes was reasonable for a road fix gear. Usually around 10 5/8". I pushed it up a little on my custom road fix gear but not a lot. Yes, I do have to back off on some fun wild descents, but that may well have saved me from a crash or two at real speed had I been riding a bike that "could". (I don't think BB drop. My mindset has always been as a rider and I think height. 10 5/8" is the (geared) road racing "classic norm". 10 3/4" is racing. My Fuji was almost 11". I could pedal through almost anything with 175s and road quill pedals and when I did hit, I was laid over far enough that it was a major heartrate jump. Jessica, my custom fixie, is 10 3/4" with say 24c tires. With Shimano 600 semi-platforms, the pedal clearance is decent.)

And of course, there is the little money think. A new frame would cost me what, $600 for a TIG welded job that might or might not have clearance for big tires and fenders. My 5 frames for my ongoing commuter have cost me ($80 + free (had to pay for a fork, $25?) + $70 + $115 + $70 = $360. This was years ago, so say X2 for inflation. $720. Over 40 years and 80,000 miles? I currently have: a frame that should go the next 20 years and 40,000 miles easily. Now how does that $600 TIG job stack up? And how does it stack up after the next crash?

Yes, my good fix gear doesn't measure up here at all. Several thousand for just the frame. 25c and fenders are pretty close to max. But it is far ,far from a winter/rain/city fixie. Rain yes. It has seen touches of the others. But its focus is as a pure '80s road racer in another world where freewheels were never invented and at that, it is an "A" bike, s good as they come.

Ben