This funky homosapein began life as a thrift store score. I could not resist the irreplaceable 3-arm crankarms, utter lack of braze-ons, and obscure european manufacture. I vowed to convert it into a wakbike style fixey with an absolute minimum of new parts.

After stripping the extra parts off, I flipped and chopped the bars into minimalist bullorns, bought a track cog for the rear, redished the rear wheel to get the chainline right, and replaced the crusty old spring saddle. A fixey is born.

Not wanting to rely on an old bottom bracket lockring and liberal dose of loctite, I decided to JB Weld the track cog on. That sumbitch ain't going nowhere!

Sadly, I am not man enough to handle a fixed gear 'round these parts and this bike quickly became known as "the most dangerous bicycle in existence". I live on a very steep hill, and so to ride into my driveway, it is necessary to slow to a crawl, and then ease the bike down the hill. Not very efficient. So my quest to convert the bike to something more manageable began.

The elegance of a fixey is obvious. No brakes, no levers, no cables, no nuthin. Just pure bicycle. My first attempt was to get a freewheel, rear road caliper, and MTB brake lever. This was a pretty sweet setup, but due to the geometric differences between V brakes and sidepull road calipers, the brake felt like crap. I had a crazy scheme to modify the lever for more leverage, but couldn't find the right parts.

Then I struck gold. I ran across a post on bikeforums.net about coaster brakes. Genius! No levers, but a fully functional brake. And no freewheel clicking! The only problem with coaster brakes is that nobody makes a good one. They are all pressed steel with non-hardened axles and non-sealed bearings. But then again, they all work pretty well and who really cares as long as it works right? This is a wackbike after all.

So I found a bunch of cadidates on eBay and then decided to stop by my local salvage yard because I remember some bike wheels there. Struck gold again - there was a 36 hole "Hi Stop" coaster brake. I bought it, laced to a crap 20" wheel, and another wheel that had a 19 tooth cog on it. $5 for both. We are now in business.

After reading a fantastic recollection of the Repack Road races, where most coaster brakes would be smoking by the end of the run, the grease completely vaporized, I decided to rebuild the hub with high temperature automotive wheel bearing grease. This stuff is good to 400 degrees F. I don't know if the hub would get that hot, but it does get untouchably hot after a long descent.

So here it is in lovely "fake fixey" setup. It might not be a fixey, but at least it doesn't click when you coast :)

Yes, horizontal dropouts are plenty functional, and get the job done just fine. But track style fork ends (not dropouts becuase the wheel doesn't "drop out" - get it?) are just plain cool. So this bike must have track fork ends! Also, I would like to see if I can shorten the chainstays a bit for quicker handling.

This being a lo-cash wackbike, it would suck to have to buy $25 dropouts. That would double the cost of the bike! Here is my plan, rendered in beautiful detail - truly a work of art in itself:

You know I am all about recycling. I think that I could unbraze the existing campy style dropouts, shape them into fork ends, and rebraze them. Wish me luck...