Just finished -two- fixie projects

Wez

Nice to see fixers getting more popular on here these days! (noticed you seem to be their biggest fan on here)

Have a question for you though, in the drivetrain specs on your adverts, you mentioned that you'd fitted a 3/32" chainring, and a 1/8th rear cog, and listed other rings too. Did you use 2 different sizes in the one drivetrain? Does it not slip about/not fit, seeing as you've got a skinnier chainring than the chain's meant for?

Just curious if it's actually work..

I'm in the middle of building 2 fixies at the minute, both been pulled from skips.
First one has been mashed around town and beyond, but snagged the chain on my 'bash ring' aka spare chainring (using a double crank atm) and peeled the chain apart. This could have gone very sour, was very glad I kept an emergency brake! Getting this one sprayed pearlescent white by a friend, have to get started on prepping now.. No money left to buy a BB remover now (so I can strip it down properly), so that's gonna be a bit of an annoying delay! But I'm hoping it'll bring a new lease of life to my baby!

Good luck with your future sales! Help spread the joy of 'fixing' a bike!

flickerx

Wez wrote: »

Have a question for you though, in the drivetrain specs on your adverts, you mentioned that you'd fitted a 3/32" chainring, and a 1/8th rear cog, and listed other rings too. Did you use 2 different sizes in the one drivetrain? Does it not slip about/not fit, seeing as you've got a skinnier chainring than the chain's meant for?

Just curious if it's actually work..

I'm in the middle of building 2 fixies at the minute, both been pulled from skips.
First one has been mashed around town and beyond, but snagged the chain on my 'bash ring' aka spare chainring (using a double crank atm) and peeled the chain apart. This could have gone very sour, was very glad I kept an emergency brake! Getting this one sprayed pearlescent white by a friend, have to get started on prepping now.. No money left to buy a BB remover now (so I can strip it down properly), so that's gonna be a bit of an annoying delay! But I'm hoping it'll bring a new lease of life to my baby!

Good luck with your future sales! Help spread the joy of 'fixing' a bike!

Fitting a 3/32 chainring with the 1/8 sprockets has never caused me any pains at all, I use it on my first self-built fixie, the one I use to commute back and forth to work every day (city centre <-> blanch). Have done so for 12 months. There's a small bit of movement of the chain on the teeth of the chainring but its minimal, insignificant. Of course you have to remember that you can only use a 1/8 chain in such a setup, not a 3/32 chain, because the 3/32 chain wont fit over the teeth of the sprocket. The 1/8 chains are slightly more expensive but not much.

A bottom bracket removal tool only costs about 10-15 euro, I'd invest in it.
Here's one.

stuf

flickerx wrote: »

Having the auction ending at 8am on a Saturday morning was bad timing. Before I put the next two up I need to read a bit about how to make better eBay sales.

I was on a frame auction that finished at a similar time to your bikes but because I didn't get to bed until 4am after a wedding there was no way in hell I was getting up for that. Conversely I was bidding on another frame which ended at 21:16 last night and there was loads of activity in the last 2 mins. just missed out on a cracking frame in the last 10 seconds

Gavin

flickerx wrote: »

Fitting a 3/32 chainring with the 1/8 sprockets has never caused me any pains at all, I use it on my first self-built fixie, the one I use to commute back and forth to work every day (city centre <-> blanch). Have done so for 12 months. There's a small bit of movement of the chain on the teeth of the chainring but its minimal, insignificant.

This bit of leeway can be handy actually, if the chainline isn't exactly perfect. Gives you a small margin for error.

Wez

Interesting.. I was in a predicament similar to that and decided to go all 3/32 but after hearing what you and Verb had to say sounds like it could have been handier!

Chainline's causing he a few headaches at the minute, wanna get a new BB, single crankset and a set of spacers and hopefully I'll be running straight and silent soon! Just gotta wait a few weeks until I'm back in the green!

I've got pretty much all the tools I need, bar bb tool and freewheel tool (but who needs that when you're riding fixed!). Even made my own truing stand out of a old front fork I had lying around, fitted a guage and can now measure to 100th of a mm accuracy. Pretty handy when it comes to saving a few shillings! I can show ya how I made it if you're interested, nice to help each other out!

flickerx

Wez wrote: »

Even made my own truing stand out of a old front fork I had lying around, fitted a guage and can now measure to 100th of a mm accuracy. Pretty handy when it comes to saving a few shillings! I can show ya how I made it if you're interested, nice to help each other out!

Yes, I would definitely like to see how this is done.
I've started building my own wheels and cant for the life of me get them straight just by hand building alone.

Wez

flickerx wrote: »

Yes, I would definitely like to see how this is done.
I've started building my own wheels and cant for the life of me get them straight just by hand building alone.

Alright then, high aswell make a tutorial, might help a few people in the same position hopefully!

I started by using an old front fork out of a skip, flipped it upside down and threw it into a vice on my counter. I used a pipe with a thread on the outside and a nut on one end, this slid over the steering tube and after drilling a hole and threading a small bolt through the nut (attached to the end of the pipe) I could tighten the grip of the fork and loosen if I want to adjust it, while everything is still being held in the vice. I screwed a nut onto the threaded tube and tightened it. This is what is going to be gripped by the vice. All this just makes sure that the jig will be solid when you're using it, don't want to be trying to balance it while focussing on the trueing your wheels.

So now you should have something that resembles this:

[Picture 1]

Fit this holder to your fork and get it gripped in the vice. The next part comes down to what you want to use to measure the accuracy of the trueing. I had a handy guage that'd been saved from some old machine which I adapted to my fork to read the alignment. Before I though of this I simply used 2 bolts screwed towards each other to get a good centreline and then wind back and fit the wheel.

[Picture 2]


For the guage I mounted a flat stick of metal (alu for mine) using a bolt that ran through the old mudguard bolt hole (which needed drilling out). Using wing nuts on the ends meant that I could easily adjust by hand, not needing a tool when adjusting the position of the guage.

[Picture 3]

I then made up a bracket for the back of the guage so that I could adjust the position along the metal stick, depending on the wheel and I could use it on the sidewall and from below to measure the contour of the rim (measuring roundness).

[Picture 4]

[Picture 5]

And that's pretty much it! I haven't got a 'finished product' picture yet, but I'll stick that up later, of course anything on this jig is customizable to suit your own needs/budget! Any questions just ask!

Hope this helps!

P.S. : You may have noticed, there's no images here.. I know! Darn Photobucket seems to not be working right. I'll try get the images hosted soon, finished work at 9, I'll have another go then!

penexpers

Does this work for 135mm spaced rear hubs?

flickerx

I look forward to seeing the pictures of the self-made truing stand when they go up.

In other news, my latest is for sale on eBay. Here

flickerx

Hey Wez you ever have any joy with getting the pics of the truing stand up?

Let me know if you need a hand with hosting the pics

flickerx

flickerx wrote: »

In other news, my latest is for sale on eBay. Here

This ends tonight around 7pm. It'll be the last one from me for a while I think. Good luck to anyone here who's interested in it.

I'll have a singlespeed up for grabs soon too, probably just try and flog it here for cheap.