Travelling In One Gear

Haven’t posted for a long while. I’ve been off the bike for a bit due to family stuff/health etc. I’ll be back with more regular posts soon (and lots of bike updates) but I thought I’d take this opportunity to offer my condolences to Sheldon Browns Family. Sheldon Passed away 3rd Feb 2008, he was without doubt the foremost technical guru on single speeding/fixed gear as well as all other things cycling related. I never met him, but every time I have a cycling related question I’d go to his site and find the answer and I am very grateful to him for making all his knowledge available to the rest of us. If you haven’t already, you should check out his site www.sheldonbrown.com which I hope will continue to be the vital resource that it is. Alternatively to find out more about the man himself check out his wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Brown_(bicycle_mechanic).

I’ve found a gear ratio that allows me to remove the chain tensioner that I was using. Originally I was running 32/16 with a half link. I tried 32/18 but still needed the tensioner. It was so close that I was sure 32/17 would be the right gear. However, Gusset do not manufacture a rear 17t sprocket so the only one I could find was made by surly but retailed at £20, a little pricey when I wasn’t really sure. This did make me think that an odd numbered rear sprocket would be the answer and got hold of a Shimano DMX 15t rear sprocket for £4. I had to take the half link out to get it to work but the difference is incredible, the bike is so much quieter and there is no longer that dragging feeling whilst pedaling. If you’ve got vertical dropouts and are running a chain tensioner I highly recommend experimenting to try and run without one, you will not regret it.

Increasingly I am suffering with numbness in my hands and fingers whilst riding. In as little as half a mile I can feel the tingling rising up to the point of almost complete numbness. A little research hints at a few solutions, gloves! Well I already use a pair. Comfy grips, a riser bar linked in with riding geometry ie stem reach and seat to handle bar distance.

I’d always had a flat bar and have never known any different. This was a good opportunity to try out a riser bar and I managed to get hold of one, for wait for it, £2. Yes that’s right 2 whole English pounds. Not a very cool model mind you, made from steel, silver and with a slight ‘shopping bike’ look to them. Well we’ll call them ‘old skool’ and have a go.

I remember after the first few days of trying out my new bike my arse was really sore. This puny little knife edge of a seat was no match for my delicate rear end, so I went and bought a nice wide comfy gel saddle. Now I will be the first to admit that it looked unsightly but my god my bottom was most appreciative. I could now dismount without a big sigh of relief and a John Wayne waddle at least. As my posterior hardened up to the new daily schedule I reverted back to the sportier model in the end, it gives my legs more room when pedaling and it is much lighter too.

I’ve been riding my new setup a few weeks now and the only technical problem I have encountered is that my old front wheel seems slightly out of true. As I apply the front brake the stopping action is abrupt and jerky, which is slightly scary on the down hills. I’ve taken the plunge and bought another wheel which cured the problem. I had tried to tighten the spokes on the old wheel but alas they had rusted and were unmovable. This newer wheel has fittings for a disc brake so I’m tempted to get a front set just to see what all the fuss is about. I have read that they offer greater stopping power but are heaver. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for a cheap test set to try out for minimal investment.

I found an interesting article in a mountain bike magazine, well actually it was in the letters section. A guy had written in to explain how he uses old inner tubes to improve puncture and pinch flat protection. He slits the tube around the inner circumference cuts off the valve and wraps the opened up inner tube around the ’new’ inner tube inside the tire to give an extra layer of protection without adding too much weight. I’ve tried this and it does seem to work.

I am trying to work with the lowest tire pressure I can at the moment at 35psi, and although it does seem to give increased comfort to the ride the traction on the tarmac section of my journey seems to slow me down a little. I’m going to play around over the next few weeks to see what difference it makes. Although I have got just a cheap set of 26 x 1.95 XC tires on the bike and I have little experience with better, more expensive tires. I appreciate that companies like specialized put a lot of money into R&D into tire design but with so many other things I need to get for the bike I’m reluctant to splash out at the moment, even if tires are the connection between you and the road.

I have found that the best source on the web for information on single speed bikes is sheldonbrown.com. From the information on his site it was apparent that a single speed converter kit would be the cheapest form of conversion. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to like single speed biking so if I was going to waste some money it might as well be as little as possible. A far cry from the elegantly polished and machined Eno hub the (gusset) kit comprised a 16t splined sprocket, a locking ring, chain tensioner and several spacers of differing widths. I plumbed for a new 3/32 chain as well and set about fitting the kit.

Obtaining a straight chain line, obviously one of the most important considerations, was very easy and on the second jiggling about with the spacers it was set. The chain now fitted to the 32t front chain ring and 16t rear sprocket I had a perfect 2:1 gear ratio (51 gear inches). I played about with chain length to see If I could get away without a tensioner, even trying the very hard to find half link (charliethebikemonger.com) but the chain was far too tight and binding or just too loose. I purchased a cheap 18t sprocket in the hope that this would solve the problem, and if not but for a millimeter or two would have worked. I contemplated grinding a flat on the threaded wheel axel to give me the little extra room (again details of this from sheldonbrown.com) that I required but felt uneasy with my competence in this task. A 17t sprocket (dropping to 48 inches), which I am sure will be the answer to this gear ratio conundrum is a little harder to find, gusset do not manufacturer one in this size but having found the perfect item made by surly I am tempted to try it, only the price tag of £20 is stopping me but it does look like a quality item. The chain tensioner makes the pedal stroke feel a little draggy, almost as if someone is slightly pulling you back, and is noisy too, without it the bike is almost silent. I think I will invest in this little spiky piece of metal and I’ll let you know how it performs soon.

I immediately cottoned on to the fact that I could probably lose a fair bit of weight off the bike, without all the gear paraphernalia, yet whilst the bike was in pieces in my porch that was the only weight I was in danger of losing.

A quick stint on eBay and I picked up set of v-brakes, The bike frame has disc mounts too but as I was going to be using my existing wheels so rim brakes were my only option. A lovely set of Shimano Deore LX brakes for £15 suited me fine and after a little clean and fitting with new fibrax pads the brakes looked and worked beautifully. They have adjustable pull on the lever, adjustable reach and seem very light – I’m not a weight weenie but anything helps. Maybe titanium bottle cage bosses would be next?

I know enough about bikes to know to steer clear of any cheapy full suspension bikes with massive oversized tubing and welds snaking all over the place, I was fully comfortable with a hardtail as I’ve never known any different really. Even suspension forks are a new one on me and for the moment seem to take more energy out of my pedal stroke, bobbing up and down like a meercat on acid uphill, than they do out of the bumps coming down hill, but I’m still experimenting and I probably need to experience a decent (read expensive) set of forks before I cast judgment.

After transferring my old wheels and handle bars(It was a relief that they fitted as I’m not up on the current options on bar sizes) the thought of taking of the all the gear and brake cabling didn’t fill me with joy, as I started to strip it of the old frame I soon realized that all the cables were routed in a slightly different way. The front brake for example was running through a wheeled groove in the threaded headset stem (linear pull brakes). My newly acquired frame had a threadless type headset, no groove there then. The gear cables ran through a plastic trough under the bottom bracket, something that the new bike didn’t have.

I returned to do some research (Google) and through my searches found a whole thriving community of people riding bikes with NO GEARS. Some were even riding with no brakes as well it seemed but that is just lunacy.

After searching pages and pages of bikes and blogs and sites dedicated to single speed bikes I realized that this was the kind of biking I had been looking for. The punk rock of MTB if you like (see side bar: why SS?), and I wanted to get in on the action. It wasn’t just the fact that Single speed bikes look really nice and sleek with clean lines, but the fact that apparently you could feel more at one with the bike, it was more fun, you get fitter – could all this really be true?

I ‘ve had the same mountain bike since around 1990, a trusty old 21 inch Carrera 21 speed, Shimano lx exage groupset and proper old school biospace chainrings, and I used it every day getting to and from college. I always wore a heavy rain mac in the winter and couldn’t understand why I would arrive boiling hot and dripping in sweat, more on that later. Anyway 17 years , 3 house moves, a wife and a baby later the old paunch is starting to get a bit settled in, and this has prompted me to start commuting again.

In the last few years I’ve not been that kind to my biospace friend and if the truth be told its been out in the garden, under a tree at the very least but still out in the elements. A quick overlook of the damage seemed to indicate that the chain at least needed a good soak in some oil, which it got. I put it back on the bike and went up the road for a test ride, remarkably all the gears worked, nothing squeaked and the only noticeable problem was the bearings in the pedals.

Being ever the skinflint I thought ‘a new set of pedals and we’re away’. So I rushed out to Halfords and picked up a cheap set of pedals. This is where my plan came unstuck . The steel shaft of the pedals had welded itself to the alloy crank arms and nothing, not even vice and hammer would get them apart.

Logging on to EBay a half decent ‘new’ crank set was in the £25-£35 range but I’d spotted the sale of a frame and forks for around the same price. Now a 21inch frame has always been far too big for my meager 5’8, and this was a opportunity to get something a little closer to the correct size for my height and leg length. A day or so later and after some cleverly timed snipe bidding I was the proud owner of a Claud Butler Rock (2005) hard-tail frame and Suntour XP75 suspension forks and stem complete with the all important cranks and pedals I had been after in the first place, a set of Truvativ x-forge. Bottom of the range but I was very pleased(the seller was even kind enough to throw in a seat post and seat as well –what a bargain at £40.00 +P&P practically a whole bike) This had restored my very much waning faith in EBay for the proverbial bargain. The excitement of a bidding war seems to push people into paying the same price, or more, for a secondhand item as a new one, sitting a few rows down shouting Buy Me Now!

The only negative to this situation was that the bike had suffered a little damage in transit and the rear dérailleur hanger had split, after presumably being knocked on its travels. It looked like it could possibly be a replaceable item, and indeed it was (more on that later too)