Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Retro Direct!



This bike has a drive train so bazaar and genius, that when i stumbled upon it on YouTube, I simply had to build myself one. Basically this bike has 2 speeds with no shifting, one of those speeds is with peddling forward and the other is achieved by peddle backwards. Don't understand? watch this video I found.

I got my chain tensioner welded by a good friend, 2 new sram chains and i bunch of spare parts from around the shop later, the retro direct "town and country" (i should call it) was born.

Note: this build involved a lot of fine tuning and customizing. Not Practical or easy project. You may need special parts to make it work properly, in other words: I was luck to only have to spend $50 to get it going.

Schwinn "Super Sport" SS



this was a fun little project that was under 2 weeks from buying the "wreck" to selling the cool single speed roadie. Most of the parts were spare junk from around the shop, the rear wheel was a striped fixed gear wheel. Just got it a new chain, seat, front brake set up, and happy new owner.

My Motobecane (second)



this is my beloved, (so customized its not funny) Motobecane "Nomade". It is the second Motobecane i have own/ worked on. the frame, although not "good steel" is amazingly smooth riding, and have really low rolling resistance dew to her 27 x 1 1/4" inch, well true junk wheels. i have re-dish the hell out of the rear to make it fit a full 8 speeds, compared to a modest 5 as it had before. this was just to make it work smoothly with my Campy Avanti brake-shifters.

as marked by my Brooks this was my flagship (workhorse depending on how you look at it) however, the torch has been passed.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Single Speed Mountain Bike #1


Here is one project that has been a long time coming. It started as a normal mountain bike with 18 speeds (already had the bad rattle can paint job). I removed the 6 speed free wheel from the rear wheel, re-dished it, and put on a BMX 16t freewheel. I took all rings from the cranks, got a newish 34t one for it, then with new; chain, brake cables, levers, grips, and tires... you have the Mountain SS... a hole bunch a crunch a munch a fun.