On Tue, 02 Sep 2003 08:28:32 GMT, "Suzy Jackson"
wrote:

Hi all,

I did a nice 70km ride on the weekend with a bunch of local troublemakers,
one of whom rode the whole time without once coasting. This strange
behaviour got me to thinking, I've got an old steel roadie in the garage
with those much sought after horizontal dropouts, and a rear triangle that
was brazed together when five speed freewheels were plentiful, that's been
quietly gathering dust since I built my go faster aluminium massively
overgeared clicky lever bike.

So I thought about it a bit, and figured it'd be lots of fun to put track
cranks and wheels on it, and throw away that nasty back brake for ever, and
see if I can break myself of this terrible coasting habit. Further down the
track (pun entirely intended) I could go and talk to a framebuilder and get
a real track frame (or perhaps even a box of tubes and lugs), put my shiny
new cranks and wheels on it, and see how much I can scare myself going
around in circles (but always pedalling of course).

In any case, I cast around on the net looking for suitable candidates, and
decided Record is ridiculously expensive, as is Dura-Ace. Next down the
list seems to be the Miche Primato bits, which seem at first glance to
strike a good compromise between shinyness and expense. Are they as nice as
they look? I see they use cartridge bearings. What do I do when said
bearings disintegrate? I'm used to my nice Campy cup & cone hubs where one
simply pulls everything apart and gives it all a scrub and some nice new
grease occasionally, and one can buy new balls and new cones should the need
arise.

Go to a bearing shop and buy new cartridges for a few dollars each,
and beg borrow or steal the required bearing pullers and puches from a
motorcycle workshop

The next issue is that the cranks are 135mm PCD, whereas most other track
cranks seem to be 144. Is this likely to cause grief?

It's the standard pcd for Campag road race rings now, so getting
replacements is easy (i.e. you can use Miche, Campag, TA, Stronglight
and probably one or two other manufacturers' aftermarket rings, even
if you ever manage to wear out the original, which will take a while).
Even easier to get 130mm (Shimano standard) rings for the even
lovelier (but more expensive) TA track cranks, though.

Finally, is it an issue squeezing the back end of a 126mm wide bike down to
120mm? It's had 130mm wide wheels forced into it before without significant
complaint.

My steel bike hasn't complained about exactly this kind of abuse yet,
and there are hundreds of old steel road frames living daily with the
track hub squeeze, so don't worry

Anyways, I was hoping to con some advice out of others who use these bits.

Regards,

Suzy


Finally, if you do a google search of r.b.t on terms like fixed, track
hubs, Miche etc, you'll find we've been discussingall these things at
great length for years.

Kinky Cowboy

*Your milage may vary
Batteries not included
May contain traces of nuts.