Since arriving in Paris and realizing what a bike friendly city it is, I’ve been wanting to have a bike. The flat nature of the city allows for a single speed bike but buying a new one is not cheap and the risk of losing it to nasty thieves is unfortunately fairly big.

I’ve been talking to my dad about my plans and he reminded me of a bike that I got from my grandfather before he passed away. It’s a Crescent road bike, not sure about year but well before -85. Early in the process of converting it into a single speed I realized that it’s a very forgiving bike to rebuild. The only part that’s not currently original is the freewheel itself.

To the process:
I started with stripping it all off the bike; gears, brakes, hub, sprocket etc. It’s all very easy but if you want to keep any of the original parts, be careful since rust often makes the process a bit harder (the swedish rust remover ’5-56′ is of great help here).

Since I wouldn’t use any brake or gear cables or wires (except for one) I cut them all off as well as the little tube holders on the frame.

For the freewheel I had to go to a mechanic to help me remove it. A special tool is required and it’s pretty easy to get one but the guys happily helped me remove it. Lucky enough I had an old BMX kicking about back in my parents garage so I used the single speed freewheel from that.

A single speed bike only requires one gear so I kept only one of the three sprockets (the one which would give a good ratio on 42 teeth, a good ratio to use in a flat city is usually around 42-17). For some bikes it can be tricky and you might need to get a new single sprocket rather than disassembling the existing one.

I used a paint stripper to remove all paint (be careful and always read the instructions since it’s super toxic and corrosive). However, it worked great and all paint was gone within hours. I wanted to leave the metal as it was but to keep rust away I used a clear varnish.

Something that is really important to check when the bike is put together is the chainline. The front sprocket has to align as well as possible with the back cog (the freewheel). This will decrease the risk of the chain jumping teeth.

Something to consider is also to redish and respace the rear wheel. Read more about this here: Redish and Respace

I’m still waiting on a Brooks saddle.

If you got any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me, and I’ll do what I can to help.

If you’re interested in building your own bike I can recommend getting involved on the bike forum Bikeforums.net where I’ve received great and super quick help.

For more information:
Sheldonbrown.com
Bikeforums.net
Singlespeed.at
Surlybikes.com