Our man Raully Raul, my college roomie and one of my bestest pals, came to visit us this weekend. Raul is an active, crafty fellow: he climbs mountains, he climbs effing ICE, he surfs, etc and he works with his hands, from woodworking to photography. It all makes him a better architect, and an interesting guy, in my opinion. And he loves to try new things. So, on his arrival, I showed him and a few other friends the bikeBasement and my stable of excessive velocipedes. Later in the evening, he noted to me ‘hey, I’d love to try and ride one of your fixed-gears…’

Now, from someone else, that might have been the Akavit talking, but not Raul.
I was stoked. So, we made plans to check them out in the morning. The next day, I brought out wrongBike for him to try. I figured it was the most upright positioned build, with an easy posture, a light gearing, and was a good first try for fixie business. We headed down the hill and across the street to some flat area, went over the basics about fixed-gears: fixed drivetrain, no coasting, brake location, back pedaling, don’t lose concentration and try to stop pedaling, and so on. Soon, he was ready to go. And man, he took to it faster than I did by a MILE. Soon, we were up in the Scotts Valley side of MV, and off to the bike path. We took the bike path end to end a couple of times, and he grew stronger and more confident. We tried different pacing, so he could observe the relationship between pace and effort: too slow and it’s muscle work, too fast and it’s heart work, but 80rpm and it’s the perfect balance. Anyway, it was a colllle and windy day, so after awhile we headed back to the house. We saw a LOT of ALC training riders on the path as well, and I believe Cyclomania may have passed us or just missed us.

Once home, I gave him each of the other bikes in turn, so he could compare. Now that he had a sense of fixed riding in general, time to try different morphologies of the builds: different gearing, different bars, different ride positions. He liked the drops on Ghostal a lot, and got really jazzed by Crook.

In fact, he was the first person to ride Crook other than me, and thankfully, no deaths.

Anyway, I thought this was a GREAT spiritual mission for Fix-e. This was once my first single-speed and later fixed-gear and also my first build. Lung walked me through the entire bike. So the bike was decommissioned late last year when I gave Lung the wheels, and I had shelved it for a time, deciding what it wanted to be, now that I had more bikes to ride on a regular basis. But Raully Raul was now committed. He enjoys a car-free lifestyle in LA, living near the beach and walking or bussing everywhere. So he was pretty excited about getting a bike again for the first time in years. So, I thought, here’s Fix-e’s new home.

There were several things I loved about that night’s build:
- We got to work on it together, mirroring what Lung and I did on this same bike
- I was able to build a functional fixie entirely out of parts in the bikeBasement (a point of pride for lung and I both)
- Raul was stoked to do it, and man, he is crafty as I mentioned, so we were tearing apart the brake and effing with the wheels and so on like as if he’d been wrenching bikes for a year.

It was a great time!

Fix-e 3.0 consists of the original frame and cranks, which were still intact. In fact, that’s how we were able to assemble the bike in one late evening: the cranks and headset were still together and good to go. I used a Dimension arc bar, which Raul liked the position of, being a longer version of what he rode on wrongBike (though he may go old school drops eventually) and one of the Vista’s breaks I mean brakes, from before the wrongBike build, but with new modern rubber. We strung it to a chrome Odyssey lever, and this is perfect Raul right here: he solved Fix-e’s annoying cable hanger problem in like 3 seconds.

The cable hanger is OEM and has an open slot in the front so that the cable can be removed from the hanger, right, but it is designed for conventional 10-speed brakes and cable housing arrangement: with a BMX lever, the cable and it’s little cable stop still want to jump forward and out of the hanger if you really slam on the brake. This was a safety problem I struggled with throughout my riding this bike. I tried all sorts of things in the past: mangling a cable stop, adding a washer to the hanger, changing cable and brake lever positioning, etc. Raul? He proposed bending the shit out of the hanger at an upward angle. BOOOOOM. SOLVED. I was stupified. I never considered taking pliers to the damn thing.

I used my IRO wheelset from the rapidly bone-picked Villain build on Fix-e 3.0. Those are awesome wheels, and a large part of why this new build came out so well, I think. They’re smooth, clean and black. We used a 15t cog to compensate for the chainring’s relatively small size, trying to get close to wrongBike’s inchgear. The chain I had on hand JUST fit, but that was with the back axle just entering the dropouts, which are the old lateral kind that you enter from the BB side of the wheelstays. So I recommended he probably would want to get a longer chain and rechain it at home. I mean, I always like a fresh chain on a bike regardless.
Clip/platform spikey pedals (my ole AnkleBiters, in fact) and my trusty yellow seat that used to go with Toro, and the bike was ready to go. A final safety check, and we were done, at 12:03am. Not kidding.

Raul was excited.

Next day, we waited for the rain to break, and wifebot(tm), who was pretty into the new build and wanted to see Raul ride it, kept watching for optimum weather, which never really came. So in the afternoon, we headed out and Raul took his inaugural ride. Here you can see he represents the Team lope and TRDL brands, and enjoyed TLTC SAG support.

Raul FLEW up the street. Wifebot(tm) even exclaimed ‘whoa he’s flying up that hill!’
I think the foot was good and everything worked out. It was so awesome to see Raul, who 24 hours prior had never ridden a fixed gear, now was riding around on his OWN fixie. SOLID.

We took the wheels off, crammed it into the trunk of his rental car, and they were off to LA.
He’s already changed out the chain, and next step?
SURF BOARD rack.

3 gets you 6 he learns to skid stop before I do.
In fact, he may already know how by the time of this writing.

Welcome to the Team Lope family, dude!

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3. Bike Build Process Log: Crook Type 3 Conversion

Lung and I got to take one of our treasured bromantic fixie-crawls this past Saturday AM, an activity that was, until recently with the birth of my botlet, a regular ritual. But these days, a free morning is hard to come by, and horse-trading occurred in my loft to yield a negotiated 3.5 hour window of awesomeness time. And so we took it, meeting at Flora Grubb’s for coffee, cat fancy and some foliage admiring. Then, we were off into the foggy, windy San Francisco summer morning, to ride and bullshit around, and also, to visit bike shops. Lung has a few projects cooking, and my goals were two-fold: check out a few parts for the Ye Blacke Death build, and look at bar options for Fix-e. I very nearly decided to sell of Fix-e last month, as the frame is a bit small, and the cranks are lower quality than I want to use now… I thought, thin the herd a bit… but then, when I actually pulled it down, I couldn’t let go. It was my first project, and it stays. But I knew my annoyance with the bars was getting untenable. It’s had long bullhorns for about a year, leather wrapped, and fairly recently the bar end brake lever was joined by a finger lever up top. But the bar end lever kept popping out, the tape was a bit weather beaten, and frankly, it was just time for a change.

I was originally looking at three types of potential bars for Fix-e, and two shapes for YBD. Though I saw these at American when I visited, I was more taken by the steep drops they had in stock by NITTO. It’s funny, some stuff you can totally piece together by imagining it, checking dims, and ordering online or sourcing through ebay or whatever. But some things you need in hand. I knew I wanted to look at track drops, but I wasn’t sure what they would feel like. I mean, I’ve ridden on conventional and aero drops for my road bikes forever, but I never really examined the popular ‘pursuit’ drops popular with the alleycat types these days, given that I don’t race around town in the drops and such. But one thing I continue to enjoy is a narrow bar width, for negotiating traffic and a, fr lack of a beter description, different ride experience than my road bikes.

I quite liked some of the drops I saw, especially NITTO’s B-123 which comes as tight as a murderous 34cm width. And I realllly liked how that felt, even though there’s definitely compromise at the top, where I often rest my hands, even more so when utilizing an uncool brake lever. But I just wasn’t convinced among the three bar styles, and left empty-handed, to ponder. Additionally, Fix-e has always been my experiment bike. From builds in the first place to specific components, I try stuff out there, then commit to them on other projects. Wrongbike benefitted from several choices made through Fix-e experimentation. So, I was a little alarmed at the idea of using a $75-100 NITTO bar on an experiment. As I dwelled, I realized that the OTHER thing I wasn’t feelin on these drops was that they are proto-fixie style. You see that geometry EVERYWHERE online. And that’s fine, they rock, and if you’re an alleycat type, power to you. But I realized I wanted something different. I ruled out the third bar (a bar Lung turned me onto, called the Sparrow) and so I was set. But gosh, wish I could actually have them in hand in order to execute!

Fortunately, I got my chance, as I got Mr. Mhom duty for the later afternoon for about an hour, while Wifebot was at the salon. I was just driving around looking for a good place to park so I could get the botlet into the chest carrier and take a stroll, when I thought to myself, self? Why not the Mission… where there just happens to be another track shop… and bless her, the botlet stayed mellow while I was in there, long enough to get both the bars I wanted AND the necessary grips, and out before mcFussin got going.

It took some research to figure out how to apply the grips, however. I read about several approaches. I can tell you, direct application does NOT work. But I decided to experiment with two suggestions I read about in the track bike forums, and they worked perfectly. You soak the rubber grips in hot water, shake them out, then scoot them onto the bars that have been doused with Windex. The Windex and water evaporate fast, and the grips hold. PERFECT.

I’ll tell you what, I think the new drops look AWESOME. They ride well too, but I do think I’m still in for a taller stem. That aggressive a riding position works for awhile, but you need to be able to sit up and admire the EHPs too, you know? But super stoked. Different cranks and tyres and I think Fix-e’s got a new lease on life!

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Over the Moon
2. Bike Build Process Log: Fix-e 3.0
3. Bike Build Process Log: Crook- Drop it Like it’s HAWT