Re-vamping to fixed/single speed

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dudi

dudi

Senior Member
Location
Ipswich, Suffolk
well now. I've built the wheel. it's close to true...

now all i need to do is dish it properly and true it properly... these must be the hard bits!

First things fist, I need to get my crankset sorted out.

What length bottom bracket is best? presumably a standards one would be too long... I think the shortest I can find is 107mm...
 
dudi said:
well now. I've built the wheel. it's close to true...

now all i need to do is dish it properly and true it properly... these must be the hard bits!

First things fist, I need to get my crankset sorted out.

What length bottom bracket is best? presumably a standards one would be too long... I think the shortest I can find is 107mm...

BB length depends entirely on the crank offset. Technically they are all 'standard', there's just lots of different standard lengths.
Assemble the crank on the BB you have now and measure the clearances between the cranks and stays and between the chainring and stays. Four five mm is the ideal. You can work out from the old BB what the new BB needs to be really easily from the clearance dimensions and a pencil.

You can use the frame to get your dishing right, just keep flipping the wheel in the drop-outs and checking the distance to a point on the stays. The same pencil that you used to calculate your BB length can be taped across the stays to adjust any up and down out of the wheel. It can also be used as a final truing aid to get the last bit of side to side out by taping it so that the pointy end is so close to the brake track that it rubs on and highlights the areas which need pulling over.
 

GrahamG

Guru
Location
Bristol
With a standard 120mm OLN track hub and british (68mm?) BB thread I've found that 110mm BB worked 3 out of 3 times with a double crankset and I only needed to go down to a 107mm BB when I changed to a track crankset.

Hope that helps.
 
OP
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dudi

dudi

Senior Member
Location
Ipswich, Suffolk
Ohhhh... got the thing to a rideable state today... no brakes as yet so limited to my road for test rides... think i'm going to enjoy this fixed lark!
 
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