I’ve been wanting to make a single speed bike for a while. So when a batch of old school road bikes came in I grabbed one to experiment on.

Love the old school graphics. I’ll either keep them or reproduce them.

Being lazy, I took the one nearest the gate, which may be too small for me. Nonetheless, I set about stripping the components.

British Made. There were three of these neat cable clips guiding the brake cable along the top tube. Sadly one of them broke as it was being removed.

After stripping the bike I washed it and cleaned the head tube and bottom bracket before repacking them with copious grease. The bits which were staying on the bike then went back on.

The new handle bar is one of the parts box bits which this project uses. For proper hipster cred it shouldn’t be tapered, ought to be narrower and needs to be anodised in some pretty colour. But I’m not a hipster, so it’s okay.

Apart from a new chain, the only bought component I plan to use on this build is a single speed conversion kit. I got mine from a company called Superstar Components, who have a competitively priced shop on eBay. I need to get myself a torque wrench so that the everything goes together properly. Once I have that the bike should go together quickly.