Converting old Legend to a fixie...heresy?

[93legendti]

Since I mostly ride my OCLV, Strong, Ottrott and HC Cross, I've been thinking of having my old Legend converted to a fixed gear...heresy or a good idea? Thanks!


Ooops, my LBS just told me I need horizontal dropouts...damn. :)

[MartyE]

Your LBS is wrong
you don't need horizontal drops, it just makes it easier to convert.
The ENO eccentric hub is an elegant
solution to the problem of Vertical Dropouts.
See this write up by Sheldon Brown at Harris Cycles

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/white-hubs.html

I think it would make a nice fixed gear bike btw.

Marty

[flydhest]

.

[93legendti]

Your LBS is wrong
you don't need horizontal drops, it just makes it easier to convert.
The ENO eccentric hub is an elegant
solution to the problem of Vertical Dropouts.
See this write up by Sheldon Brown at Harris Cycles

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/white-hubs.html

I think it would make a nice fixed gear bike btw.

Marty

Yup, the link you posted jogged my LBS' memory-- he has a customer who has an Eno, so I am going to talk to him and see how he likes it. Thanks!

[Sandy]

Why is it not a good idea? You aren't riding it so making it a fixee makes sense. You will have a great frameset for your fixee and it will be put to use.

Let's see- make a fixee out of it and enjoy using it. Or just let it sit there and collect dust. Not a tough decision to make.

I may make a fixee out of my CSi. I don't ride it at all and it just sits there, very lonely, indeed.

Sandy

[Ray]

My experience is that if you like a bike as a geared bike, you'll like it as a fixie (unless the bb is too low and you start smacking your pedals). And if you don't like it with gears, you're apt not to like it fixed either. So, if you like the Legend but it's not getting ridden for whatever reason, getting an ENO hub and converting it sounds like a great idea. If the reason you don't ride it is because you fundamentally don't like it, you probably won't like it much fixed either.

-Ray

[marle]

To Ray's point on bb, does it make sense get a shorter crank?

[93legendti]

My creeky knee won't let me switch crank length. I am going to get a wheel built up and put it on the Legend. Thanks guys!

[Sandy]

I agree with everything that you said, but I don't understand one thing. Why would you start smacking your pedals if you switched your bike to a fixee? If he didn't have trouble with that before when using the bike as a multi-geared bike, then why should there be any problem with only one gear? Serottas certainly are not prone to that. Perhaps in some crits there may be a problem (some say that is not too much of a problem anyway) but he certainly won't be using a fixee in a crit. :confused:

Fixed in one place,

Sandy

[MartyE]

Sandy,
with a fixie you can't coast through a corner, if you try to
stop pedalling it bucks you off the bike.
So one needs to either shorten cranks, get really good at
timing corners (and not make sharp leaned into turns) or
get bucked off the bike alot.

Marty

[Sandy]

Never thought about that. I do remember riding with another cyclist on a regular group ride. We were going around a sweeping curve at a decent speed, I realized that on a fixie you better know what you are doing or you could be in real trouble.

Thanks for the explanation. It certainly makes sense.

Sensible (?) Sandy

[Ray]

Yeah, what Marty said - you can't coast through corners and you WILL have your inside foot precisely at the bottom of the stroke while in the deepest part of your lean at SOME point. So, be aware. But pedal choice is a huge factor that can make this a very small problem. I had a fixie with a bb drop of 65mm that I rode with clips and straps for a while and pedal strikes, while never serious, were an occasional fact of life. My current fixie has a bb drop of 80mm, but using small spd pedals I've never struck a pedal. A low bb doesn't have to be a problem, but its something to be aware of. You can also go with a shorter crank, but I run the same 172.5 cranks on just about everything and haven't had a problem.

-Ray