|   My Conversion Story (lots of pics) | cloughja
Nov 12, 2003 8:49 PM | | It's been a long time coming, but I finally borrowed a nicer camera so I could take some pictures of my conversion... but before we get to that, here's a little story about my many steps along the way.
Step 1: Going back to the hardtail-
I moved to the DC area for graduate school in the summer of 2002 and realized that the FS freeride bike I had been riding was overkill for the East Coast and moved everything back over to my old 1999 Cannondale F700 frame. (caution: crummy picture and geared content... for now)
Step 2: Dropping the derailleurs (sort-of)-
After a several months of East Coast riding, I realized that I never shifted gears on my front derailleur. I started looking into going to a 1x9 setup. Occasionally, I would check this (Singlespeed) board, but never understood the idea of SS'ing and convinced myself I would never be dumb enough to do that. Well, when I was just about ready to do my 1x9 conversion, my riding buddy (who still rides a full gearie) mockingly said "why don't you just go single speed?" I was intrigued, and on my next ride, I tried staying in one gear (32x20) for the entire ride. All I can say is that I WAS HOOKED! I hadn't felt that much pure joy on a bike in the longest time. So I decided then and there to go for broke and do the full SS conversion. MeanTodd at Webcyclery.com hooked me up with a 20t Novatec cog, 34t black spire cog, and Spot chain guard. Unfortunately, the cog was on back-order, so here's how my SS looked for the first few "official" rides. The floating chainring tensioner idea that I wanted to use didn't work on my frame (rubbed the chainstay) so an older rear der. went on as a tensioner:
Step 3: Official SS Bike-
It didn't take long for the noise of the derailleur and the trouble of taking off the chain to drive me to pick up a Surly Singleator. So, here it is, my bike as it stands today. These pics were taken after a rather chilly ride this weekend.
Full-bike shot (sorry its a little out of focus):
From the front:
Drivetrain close-up:
Finally, a close-up of the rear:
Step 4: ???-
As most of you know this is an addiction. As much as I love this bike, I can't help but dream of a disc-specific, SS-specific frame where i won't need the tensioner at all. I'll save those posts for another day... Hope you all appreciated my tale. Now get out and ride!
-Josh |
| not so bad being dumb...welcome aboard. nm | striker
Nov 13, 2003 1:24 AM | | |
| Fun, isn't it? Try the Singulator in push-up too | pushbike
Nov 13, 2003 5:02 AM | | Though your set-up looks fine as it is. |
| tried that first but it made more noise. For 20t, this works.nm | cloughja
Nov 13, 2003 2:39 PM | | |
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