West 5 Cycles
Cycling, fixed-gear bike building and life on two wheels onlyArchive for Custom builds
Creative and unusual bike designs
Everytime there is a bike show somewhere in the world, I scan the photos posted of latest designs manufacturers are bringing out and can’t help but feel a little tinge of disappointment. Bikes still look like bikes and albeit some innovation is taking place with materials, and the drive train – it’s still nothing Earth shattering really. If you read cycling magazines it certainly looks like the only people out there seriously experimenting with bike design are the folks involved in Human Powered Vehicles (HPVs), whose trikes, recumbents and strange contraptions are re-defining what a mode of transport powered by humans is all about.
Fear not though, apparently there is a huge subculture of weird and wonderful experiments around the humble bicycle. If you decide to disregard the UCI definition that a bicycle has to have a frame made up of two triangles forming a paralellogram, suddenly the world is your oyster. Toxel.com has a wonderful collection of innovative and some plain crazy ideas around bicycles – why can’t we have more craziness like this to lighten up some bike shows!
Get on the good foot - but which one?
Singlespeeding on a mountain bike
Not wanting to completely ignore those of us who have mountain bikes still littering the back of the garden shed from those days where that was (is) still the bike to have – why not put it to good use and turn it into a single-speed for a new lease of life?
Don’t know about you, but it does seem that the nineties in particular made people part with their previous cycling preferences and leap on the mountainbike bandwagon whether there were mountains nearby or not. A little like the 4×4 fever that gripped the nation, most of whom can today be found in London where the biggest off-roading is over speed-humps. So my guess is that there must be a ton of bikes lying around, the product of new years resolutions of bygone days, bought in a whim before the realising that all those gears, ideal for off-roading, actually makes riding on tarmac a drag. You pedal like mad and still stuggle to keep up with anyone on a road-bike. Well, why not try something different and turn that mountainbike into a cool single-speed – build strength, technique and look cool, while having the bike easiest to clean and keep running smooth for miles.
Another great article on Bikeradar gives an insight to how single-speeding can make that old mountain-bike feel fresh and fun, by turning it into a minimalist machine.
Recycle your old bike – turn it to a singlespeed!
Now a lot of time on this blog has been devoted to the fixie fever that has gripped me and many others out there on the road and I’ve also written at length about building your own fixie from parts begged, borrowed, bought but not stolen. However, as my still recovering partner can attest – fixie riding is not all without hitches – it certainly takes some getting used to, namely that age-old program in our brain which says – if legs are tired, coast a little to recover.. well, that doesn’t apply to fixies as he painfully discovered. (Actually there is a way to learn to recover on a fixie even as your legs are spinning around, but more about that some other time)..
Before you take the plunge and go all fixed, you could reap the benefits of a single-speed: better training, practice the idea of fixie riding without the potential painful side-effects and have a bomb-proof commuter where winter grime is as easy to wash of as grabbing a bucket of water and tossing it over the bike. What I’m talking about of course is turning any unloved bike you might have around (or can persuade a friend to part with) and giving it a single-speed make-over. It’s the easiest and cheapest way to feel the thrill of a new bike – revamp an old one!
Bikeradar has this excellent how-to article about converting a bike to a single-speed – also have a read through the comments, some of which offer some useful addendums to the article, including the benefits of fixie vs. single-speed and dangers of using chain tensioners on fixies.
