Building My Fixie Pt.1 ~ Background

So you own a bicycle, right? You know, a couple of wheels, handlebars, a saddle, some brakes and gears, right? Well what if you took away those last two ~ the brakes and gears ~ is that still technically a bicycle? Well for many people it becomes something different, something simpler, boiling down the messy peripherals of biking to its essential core ~ freedom and the open road. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you The Fixie…

The clean, simple lines of a good fixed-gear bicycle. Credit to @trucnul on Flickr for the photo.

So at this point (if you don’t already ride one), you’re wondering why anyone would voluntarily take the brakes and gears off their bike and fix the rear wheel and pedals together with no freewheel. And so did I. Until I saw my first fixie “in the flesh” so to speak, in the Christchurch branch of Halfrauds Halfords. One of their bike mechanics has an old Raleigh racer from the 80′s which had a weird mix of parts on it, none of which seemed to match but somehow together made something greater than the sum of its blah blah blah. You get the idea.

After that, I did a little searching around and discovered a whole ‘scene’ devoted to the single speed bicycle. What really got me interested was not the mechanics of the bikes (I’m not much of a biker if truth be told – more for necessity than pleasure), but the looks that could be achieved from stripping down an otherwise mediocre bicycle and fitting a handful of new parts. Even the briefest of searches on Flickr (other image-hosting sites are available) for ‘fixie‘, ‘singlespeed‘ or ‘fixed gear‘ shows the talent, dedication, skill and sheer inventiveness of some people.

A typical 'Hipster'

On the flip side (and I’m a mere outside observer here), there seems to be a contentious aspect to the fixed gear community, and that comes in the form of the ‘Hipster’. The Urban Dictionary has a host of definitions should you wish to read them, but basically like any group of people who love doing something, there’s another group of people who come along, see what’s happening, copy it, make it ‘cool’, it becomes mainstream/more widely known and the newcomers often get all the praise for starting it. Not exactly what’s happened here, but you get the idea.

“A-ha!” I hear you say, “you said you’re not a die-hard biker, that must mean you’re copying it – you’re as bad as the hipsters!” Well maybe. All I know is I like the look of a good fixed-gear bike and I’d like to try my hand at building one. So here goes.

First step: find a donor bike.

My search for a donor bike on which to base my fixie lead me to an advert on the Adtrader website. Someone was offering a run-down old Raleigh racer for just £15 so I called them up and went to see it. On first inspection it was a bit of a disaster; gaffer tape on the bars, cracked tyres without inner tubes and lots of rust.

The Raleigh 'Ace' fresh after purchase. Doesn't look too bad in this shot, but it's a dog, trust me.

When I first saw it I thought it might be a Raleigh Record Ace, which from looking around is actually quite a nice bike. But no, it’s merely an ‘Ace’, dating back to 1983. Some kind bod has even got scanned copies of the brochures from those heady days of neon pop socks and the Cocteau Twins, so you can check out what the Ace would’ve looked like in its heyday! Who thought amber-wall tyres were a bright idea should be shot – they looked dated and old even then!

So there we go, £15 down and well on the road to my first fixie. Next step – strip her down!