This summer I ended up getting a this old road bike for free and decided to use it as a commuter to school. I thought about fixing it up and turning it into a fixed gear, but didnt know if I would have time. Well it took almost an entire semester of ebaying and finding cheap parts, but I finally got it finished. Fixing up the old bike was definitely a great learning experience and quite a bit of fun too. Now I just have to get used to the lack of coasting. I went with a 44x15 and its worked pretty well so far, no huge hills to speak of in Raleigh, NC. I still have to put on the rear brake for when I flip the rear wheel and use the freewheel, but Im having too much fun riding fixed to bother with it right now. Lemme know what ya'll think.

Before and after pictures are attached now since the image hosting site didnt work so well...

it's good to see that it comes with a brake, because it's really hard to return a bike to yourself. How do you demand that you install a brake on your bike for free, since you didn't recomend it to yourself?

ps, it's hard to see a black bike at night, you may want to wrap it in reflective tape.

Wow, like a whole new bike. Pretty nice for 1st conversion.
Just 1 Q: Where's that cable running to on the back of the bike?

really nice job. a complete makeover. i pulled that stem out of a used bin once....

Oh yeah, that cable running to the back of the bike is for the rear brake when I get around to installing it. For now its electrical taped to the frame. More than likely Ill get it put on this weekend.

Yeah, I think I got that stem for $0.99 on ebay.

youve gone over your traffic limit on 2 of the 3 images. might wanna find a new host. flickr maybe?

Now it's on all 3.

i want to see the pix!

Maybe just compress them and upload them here as attachments?

Ok, I just uploaded the images. Hopefully it works now...

sexy.

what size are those crankarms? is it me or do they look long as **** to anyone else?

The crank arms are 175mm, they just look huge at the angle the picture was taken I think.

Actually, 175's are pretty huge to these folks. Not many run anything larger than 170's (unless they are riding monstrous 60+cm frames), and 165's are popular.

Hopefully, you don't have to learn about pedal strike the hard way.

Looks great.
Tell us about the paint job.

you should attach the rear brake lever to the light switch.

I guess it makes sense to use shorter crank arms now that I think about it...oh well, no sharp turns for me!

The "white" paint that was on the frame originally was in pretty bad shape. I guess 20 years without being washed might have something to do with that. I started with the fork to see how hard it was going to be to get all the paint off. Two hours and 1/4 of the fork later I decided to look into another way to strip the paint. I found a local guy to sandblast the frame and fork for cheap. Looking back, I wouldnt do the sandblasting again. It pitted the metal pretty bad so I had a lot of work trying to smooth it out. Once I did that I bought some Duplicolor primer, black gloss and clearcoat. The paint would look much better had I taken more time to fix the sandblasting, but it came out ok. Ill be riding a fair amount at night so Im looking into some reflective paint or stickers to make it stand out a bit more.

The only expensive part were the wheels and I wanted something I could be pretty hard on. Theyve worked really well thus far. Other than that I think I spent less than $100 on everything else. I built this because I couldnt stand locking up my road bike even for a few hours on campus.

hey I go to state too! nice conversion, I'll look for it around campus.

Nice conversion job... what was the frame? I can't tell in the pics.
It had cottered cranks, yeah? Didja have fun getting those off?

No idea what kind of frame it is. Sometime late last year I posted a picture on the forums and tried to get it identified and I dont think anyone had a definite answer. It was pretty much covered with stickers and looked to have been repainted at least once. As for the cranks...yeah they were a huge pain to get off. I spent quite a bit of time staring at them before finally figuring out how to get them off without a sledgehammer.

thats a sweet conversion, only thing id suggest is a new seatpost

I'm not wild about the stem and post, but otherwise very sharp!

weird i go to NC State as well. Black IRO with red tape on it.

those of you that got to NC state, you ever see a gloss black 10 spd riding around with red and black cranks and red bar tape?

I havent really been lookin, but Ill keep my eye out for it. Did it get stolen or something??

Wow, there are a lot of ncsu students that post around here. I like Raleigh a lot better than Charlotte (hometown) for riding, seems like less traffic.

By the way, the seatpost will soon be replaced...you cant see it in the pictures but its pretty rusted at the top. The stem was cheap, I thought the grey finish would look better, but Im not crazy about it now that the bike is built. It works though...so for now Ill probably just leave it.

Yikes, those cranks are kinda scary