My Old New Fixie

For the last few months I've been building a fixie and have just finished it, just in time for the snow and winter - but hey ho! My Dutch bike suffered a puncture and lights failure at the same time, and really needs some down-time (1800 miles without a service, only needing basic maintenance and pumping up the tyres only a few times is pretty awesome really - and yes, I've neglected her really...sorry Gloria!) so that pushed me into finishing my fixie by locating some super-cheap wheels for 35 quid for both! So, after a clandestine meeting at Waterloo Station one morning I had some wheels to go with my 'sticky' front Conti' and my 'skiddable' rear Soma tyres!

Anyway, this is the story...

A while ago I bought a Reynolds 531 frame from eBay for £60. It looked very sad!

So I started by stripping it down and removed the ugly braze-on cable guides on the top of the cross bar by wrapping the joints in wet towels and using a blow-torch to heat the braze-ons until they could be pulled off - a guy at work explained it to me but this was definitely a scary part!

This is it all naked:

After rubbing it down for what seemed like hours, I took it to Armourtex who powdercoated it for me (colour isn't so good in this pic):

Then, slowly but surely, I started adding parts. Every single thing I added to this bicycle I had to learn about. I literally knew nothing about how to put a bike together!

I decided on only one brake, as I'd be riding it fixed so can slow the rear wheel with the pedals anyway. Also, a guy at work told me all about his research on the braking coefficient of front vs rear brakes, of which I understood enough to know I didn't actually need a rear brake as if the front brake is operating at maximum the rear wheel is actually slightly off the ground!


So every part of this bicycle has been fitted by myself (apart from the bottom headset race as the frame needed to be 'reamed' to get that on so the lovely guys from Tokyo Fixed in Soho did that for me.

Until after a lot of work on Friday night, I finally got it all put together!!

...and I absolutely love the bar tape! Anybody that knows me will agree how perfect all the skulls, 'broken' hearts, snakes etc all over it are! 

Let me tell you too - this bike is fast! I chose a 48 crank and 19 rear cog and it shifts! Going from a Dutch upright (as great as these are for their purpose) to this is such a difference! It's much faster to accelerate and turn than my Dutch bike. When I want to turn that, I need to send a message to the engine room who then power up the engines and send a message back up to the bridge and slowly the ship comes about. With this fixie it's immediate! 

All of this has made me think that more people should build their own bikes - I've spent less than £300 and have an amazing bicycle! I do hear about lots of guys building bikes for their girlfriends but why don't more girls build their own bikes? I knew nothing about building bikes before I started but I now have a bike that I know every part of and am confident to change any part! You don't need to know anything before you start - just read up (on the Internet for example) about each part as you think about it.

It's as easy as riding a bike!