Half the fun of fixies is building your very own and making it yours by choosing components, colour schemes and accessories. But a question I get frequently is whether you need a specific kind of bike to start with or can you just turn pretty much any bike into a fixed-gear wonder?

My answer would be: if you want to have a single-speed, virtually any bike can be made into one of these, whereas if you want the real deal – i.e truly a fixed-gear, you have somewhat less of a choice of starting points. Here’s what you need to know:

Track frames

Probably the most ideal starting point, these frames were designed for fixie riding to start with and are thus great for a build. Things to bear in mind however, is the fact that true track frames don’t have drilled forks, which means you’ll either have to risk it and drill them yourself (not advisable unless you really know what you are doing), get a pair of special Dia Compe brakes that mount onto the fork legs with a clamp rather than rely on the drilled hole in the fork, or you replace the track forks with road going ones and fit a road brake as normal. It’s important you figure this out, because riding without a front brake is really not a good idea. Also track frames don’t have bottle cage mounts so if you are planning to train on one – you’d better get one of them Camelback hydration backpacks too.

Modern road frames

These you can easily turn into single-speeds by using spacers to cover most of the free-wheel hub and only leaving one sprocket to use permanently. If you have a compact or triple crankset you also have some more choice when it comes to chainring spacing for your chainline. Use the one which gives you the straightest chainline (often the inner ring on a compact, which means if you want you can fit a bash quard in place of the outer ring to protect your trouser legs).

In general, particularly new roadbike frames tend to be wider to accomodate said freewheel hub so if you go for a fixed rear wheel here you’ll need one with a longer axle than normal and a bunch of axle spacers. (London Fixie Bike will sort you out). It’s important you use a longer axle and spacers rather than try to flex the chainstays around a narrower than normal wheel, as you risk wrecking the frame. You will still need a chain tensioner sprocket (on a mount off the axle) too as the vertical drop-outs don’t allow you to adjust the chain tension by moving the wheel backwards and forwards.

Vintage road frames with horisontal or diagonal drop outs

These are much better conversion candidates than modern road bikes as the chainstays tend to be a bit narrower (as they had fewer gears in the 60s, 70s and the 80s you know ) and the diagonal drop outs mean you are likely to get away with not having to use a separate chain tensioner sprocket. Due to narrower bottom brackets you should be able to just fit a normal track crankset too, without too much chainline hassle.

Mountain bike frames

Again depending on the age of the frame you either have narrower or wider chainstays, and either vertical or diagonal drop-outs, so the same rules apply as for modern vs. vintage road bike frames.

Cruiser frames etc.

These are a little trickier, not because of any other reason than the sometimes odd wheel sizes used on cruisers limit the choice of wheels you have and thus the kinds of components you can use for doing the conversion. If you can get hold of cruiser frames able to accept 650cc or BMX wheels you are already making life a lot easier for yourself.

So that’s pretty much it! Go build your fixie and show us some pics!