If anyone is curious to what I did in the end here goes:


Oiling everything up, replacing the ancient tyres with new ones and fixing the breaks so they stopped rubbing against the tyres made a world of difference! But 48T was still too hard a chainring to be my only one.


I bought a Sugino 34T inner ring plus chainring bolts and spacers and bolted it inside my existing chainring creating a double. Fortunately everything all fit and the distance from the frame remained good so no changes to the axle were needed. I also bought a Sugino Altus front derailleur (same brand/type as my rear derailleur) and an old non-indexed double shifter to replace my single. I wired it all up with new gear cables and everything looks to be in working order! The only mistake I made was that the new gear shifters did not fit on the handlebar pole like the previous one so I fitted them on the lower bar of the frame and unfortunately placed them too low so its an uncomfortably long reach, so eventually I'll need to move them up and rewire everything.


I used the facilities and the help of the brilliant mechanic at the London Bike Kitchen near Hoxton and it didn't end up taking too long. I'm feeling very accomplished at the moment as I had never done something like this before.