I haven't posted here on ages as I've been riding road bikes now for the past five years or so, but my brother has taken over my fixed gear interest in my absence. For years we've been slowly converting his 1970's Mercier. Years ago, I shaved off most everything but he wanted to go further.

I cut the dropouts off, added a little metal on the seat stays and then just flipped the old dropouts (after re-shaping them a touch) and welded (not braised) it all together. It is stronger than it was before the conversion and looks great. The geometry is almost identical to the original (which was accomplished by lengthening the seat stays). I added a new brace across the seat stays as his was badly crushed from an over-tightened rear brake and fabbed up a third little "devil tail" to match the other two already on the frame.

I sanded an polished his cut aluminum drop bars (cut up to bull horns), the old left over SR stem and his cranks to a mirror finish.

I then soda blasted the frame and etch primed, colored, then cleared it. We kept the original fork as the likes the way it rides.

Photos below. I just wanted to show that the conversion CAN be done properly, but it requires a fair bit of skill and many hours of labor.

This bike is made entirely from left over parts and was put together for well under $300 I believe. Its just lots of time and labor.

Stunning! Way to be an awesome brother.

Wow, that's pretty damn awesome.

+1

That's sick! How did you go about lengthening the seat stays? Just cut, bend, and fill the gap with tube from a donor bike's seat stays? What kind of welder are you using? I'm pretty good at welding and this looks like a fun project!

That is dope! I like the tail's!

that's freakin awesome!

Great work, but what was the purpose of reversing the dropouts? Make it more difficult to remove the rear wheel?

No street cred for forward facing dropouts.

Thank you for the kind words. I simply cut out the original drop out and extended the seat stays with some steel stock that I had. I only had to add maybe 1/2". I then just ground down the dropouts until they looked like track ones and welded them back in. It took a bit of work to blend things in smoothly like they are in the photo.

For this project I just used a regular MIG setup. The hardest thing to weld was the brace and the tail as my welder does not have a "pulse" mode so I had to keep making tiny, very precise tacks.

It makes it far easier to properly tension the chain for a fixed rear hub. I suspect my brother also wanted it for the looks, as well.

I would be the brother. And yes, that is correct. Thing rides and looks like a champ.

Uhh... what? What am I missing here?

Dropouts are nice. They allow the wheel to easily "drop out" for removal and installation. That's why they were put on almost all bikes decades ago.

And following the same logic, horizontal drop outs certainly are a superior design for a fixed hub which is why they appear on all track bikes. I don't see what you're getting at.

If your Bike was alive he/she would slap you! :-)

yes horizontal, but the forward facing horizontal drops are actually more versatile, especially if you use fenders

The point of doing this conversion was not to say that, "horizontal drop outs are bad." Quite to the contrary, my brother and I have both ridden converted road bikes extensively. The fact is, he did struggle to get the chain properly tensioned before. Our aim was to solve that issue and we did it simply because we could.

Please don't take offense or think anyone is try to negate the validity of the various styles of drop outs. As I've said, I ride a road bike now and am not all interested in arguing about the merits of the different frame designs. I posted this merely to share something fun that my brother and I did together and to show that indeed, it CAN be done. No one is saying that anyone SHOULD do it.

Alright, good enough for me.

I wish I had the welding skills/equipment you have... Many fun projects, I'm sure.

It seems pretty apparent that rear dropouts are more effective for chain tension purposes, but to reiterate what my brother was saying: it was not some kind of superiority statement. The new dropouts have helped substantially with my chain, and it looks like a true track frame which in and of itself is cool considering it was a $100 toss-away road frame when I bought it years ago.

Thanks. Perhaps I'll build myself a track bike later. I miss having one sometimes.

Bike has been ridden daily now for about a month and is holding up great. I know I have read that doing this type of work would render the frame dangerously weak but that is not the case.

looks really great. good work.

So awesome. Nice job dude(s)!

Ride is holding up fine, in fact it feels much sturdier than the original setup.