Those dropouts don't look semi-horizontal to me...

If you want to ride that bike fixed you're either going to have to get lucky with your gear ratio, or build a wheel around a White ENO hub.

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<If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough>
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Chain tensioner?

Not with a fixed gear. Fine with a single-speed (using a freewheel).

Exactly.

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<If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough>
Get Fitter!
Proud member of the Smartasscrew, MONSTER CLUB
Get your FIX today?

What do you mean by "lucky with the gear ratio"?

I kind of figured I'd have to get the Eno hub, which would be cheaper at this point than buying another bike and then converting that to fixed.

You would be lucky if when you chose your gearing the chain fit without needing any adjustments.

In 1986, when I bought my Cannondle R600, all of the Cannondale R??? bikes used the same "3.0" frame. I considered building it up as a fixie last year, and I used http://www.peak.org/.../fmu/php/fixmeup.php to find a gear combination that was a perfect fit for my 56cm frame. My guess is that you could use the calculator in the URL provided to find a ratio that would work for you.

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-Mark Rebuck, http://www.markrebuck.com/

Cool site. I will definitely look into that. Thanks!

Post: Chain tensioner?




Not needed if you go with the ENO hub. Can't use a chain tensioner if you are going fixed and not freewheel since they don't handle the foree of back pedaling.

Have you used the Eno hub? Do you get exactly the same result using that as I would if I had the right kind of dropouts for fixed?

Yes and yes.

I don't have one but know people who do (I have track dropouts). The only problem I have heard is because it changes where the centre of the wheel is there can be interference with the frame at certain angles. For example, when all the way forward there might not be clearance and when at 12:00 the rim can be too high for the pads to hit the brake suface (easy fix for that is remove the rear brake)

www.whiteind.com/ENO_web/eno-index.html

He's certainly not going to put a rear brake on a fixie, are you Brent? :)

I'm assuming the rear brake is coming off his bike as part of the conversion since he’s going fixed. People who run single speed freewheel instead of fixed sometimes leave on a rear brake and run into a clearance problem with the ENO hub.

I run a front brake on my Soma Rush because I have some steep hills with barricades at the bottom and ride in traffic on my commute. Trying to stop on a steep hill with no brakes is too hard on my old man knees so running brakeless seems too extreme.

I saw a fixie mountain bike with a rear disk brake. I don’t know about you but if I was riding so steep of trails that I needed disk brakes I’d want more than one gear.

A guy I was talking to in a bike shop earlier this week was riding a Zipp fixie. Definitely an attention getter.