Road Frame to Single Speed
 

I have the opportunity to get a fairly nice aluminum road frame w/carbon fork for an excellent price. I already have the road bike that I want, but I was thinking of using this frame for a single speed. I already have some components that I could use:

Mavic Open Pro wheels (28 spoke)
Easton stem and bar
I have several saddles to choose from

I would mainly use the bike to commute on. It wouldn't take much of a beating, 90 percent of the commute is on a fairly new MUP.

What do I need to consider in this type of a conversion? Any suggestions on a seatpost or crank set? Thanks in advance for your responses.

if the rear wheel has a freehub then you can get a fairly cheap conversion kit with cogs, spacers, and a chain tensioner.

hmmm... this doesn't seem to be a very popular idea in this forum. The more I read the posts in the forum, it appears that most single speeds (and fixed gear) are based on track frames.

You can be just as happy on any frame converted to a SS/Fixed.

Using back your old road wheels will be easy, just like what hairnet said. Get a conversion kit.

Cranks, just about anything that fits your budget will work. Just do some research into the gear combination that you think will suit your type of riding I guess.

Not true, many of us have conversions. I'm working on mine right now. It's an older bike though, 78 Peugeot UO9 and it has the semi horizontal dropouts, does yours?

Just got my Mavic CXP-22's in the mail yesterday, they're purty

the thing that makes SS so easy with a freehub rear wheel is that you can just play around in any gear combination your chainrings/cassette will give you until you get to one that you like. Just a matter of shortening the chain, removing the chainring you don't need and using spacers on the freehub from there.

You may also be able to avoid buying a SS kit if you have a few items kicking around.

Cogs and spacers can be sourced from old cassettes. Unscrew or cut the bolts holding the cogs together (on many, not all cassettes) and pull apart the cogs and spacers. You'll likely need more than one cassette's spacers, or you can cut down tubing of the appropriate diameter to fit. I recently used some copper, and I've seen folks use PVC. You'll need to either measure the chainline or be willing to futz around with the cog position to get it right. Keep the old lockring from the hacked-up cassette to hold it all together.

Personally, I love conversions. I ride on the road, I like SS. No brainer for me. I'm not too interested in riding a track bike on the road. Horses for courses and all that.

My recent freehub setup so you can see what I'm getting at. From the inside out, I have a plastic cassette spacer (keeps the copper from bottoming out on the hub shell), then copper pipe cut to length, re-used cog, plastic cassette spacer, really think metal cassette spacer (to give the lockring something to bite into, in the past I've also used the smallest cog here as it has the indents that register with the lockring) and then the lockring. I had to be sure that I set things up so that the lockring tightened up against the whole assembly before it bottoms out on the freehub body.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2772/...c8b4aa93_b.jpg

Just do it!

I'm thinking the majority of conversions of this type are "assemblies of opportunity" You put together whatever components you find handy and economically and which you think will look cool together.

It pretty much doesn't matter what you do because we're going to find a reason make fun of your bike anyway.

Serious? You'll make fun of my bike? Dang! If you can make fun of my bikes I can assure you that it will be even easier to make fun of the rider! Either way, thanks for the encouragement.

There was a whole discussion a while back about using cassette cogs for SS conversions. It basically concluded that it's a bad idea because those cogs are designed to make shifting easier, which means they sort of want to drop the chain and may not be totally safe. I would do it to see if I like the gear, but in the end I think I'd get a cog without all the shaped teeth and cut outs.

Maybe this isn't a problem on a frame with horizontal drop outs since you can keep the chain tight always. With vertical drop outs you'll need a tensioner, which means the chain won't be under constant tension and tight.

I love my conversion, I just hate the low end frame

The only way the chain will derail is if a derailleur pushes it off the cog. There needs to be a side force from the derailleur jockey pulley to make this happen. If what you said were true, the chain would drop off the cog as soon as the chainline were not straight, which is most of the time on a multi-speed system. Also, the chain would be constantly falling off the chainrings, because they nowadays also have all kinds of shifting ramps, bevelled teeth and whatnot to facilitate shifting. Bottom line, cassette cogs work just fine for SS conversions.

does anyone know the thread? I'd like to re read to make sure I'm not remembering bull**** :o

In my experience, cassette cogs work just fine, I've never had any slipping.