How much did it cost to get this Fixed Speed bike going again?

I finally had some time to break down and repair the Fixie I was gifted a few months ago. Was it expensive though?

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A few months ago my friend Liam very graciously gifted me this beautiful single speeed bike and if you’ve watched the video where I went down to South London to pick it up from him you’ll know that there were quite a few issues with the bike that stopped me riding it

The 40 odd miles home the three main problems I had were that the brake levers seem to be too close to the drops and so they wouldn’t fully engage without hitting the side of the drops when I tried to resolve that issue by undoing the brake lever here and moving

It up further to the middle of The Handlebar uh I may have overtightened the screw ever slightly and I broke the hinge on the back of the lever um that left me with only one potential working brake but then the rear Brak uh I found that the caliper on the back was

Slightly loose that wasn’t engaging properly either so that was two brakes that weren’t working and I couldn’t even use pedal braking because the Hub was on the flip-flop side meaning that I could Freewheel and I could Coast therefore it didn’t really have any brakes that was problem one and two the third problem

Was the wheel nuts that hold the wheels on seemed to be covered in like a plastic housing now I didn’t know if they were stuck on there if they were supposed to be on there but I couldn’t get a toll on there I couldn’t uh get

Any sort of grip with my hands on there to take the tire off which was an issue because the front tire had a mega puncher uh and I wasn’t able to take it off to fix it I did eventually manage to get the front wheel off when I was in

The city once I’d got a train back from South London to the city I managed to undo the will nuts with my fingers I found an Evan store where I was able to find some new inner tubes with an 80 mil valve stem on the inner tube because

These are 50 mm deep rims and I managed to get the wheel fixed and just about safely rode it to Liverpool Street where I got on the train again and brought it home so those are three things that needed sorting with it straightway just to even get it home however now I’ve got

It back and I’ve had a proper look at it there are a number of other issues that need sorting Chief amongst them is that it’s just a little bit Rusty that’s not really surprising Liam did say that he’d ridden it twice uh and then largely forgotten about it left it in his garden

Uh undercover thankfully so it wasn’t too badly affected by the weather but of course it was outside so it was still subject to some moisture so the chain is completely rusted the rear hub is completely rusted all of the the nuts and the bolts and various bits and

Pieces on the bike have rust on them so the first thing I’m going to do to this bike rather than boder fix and just try and move the brake leaves in I’ve got some new brake levers but rather than just putting those on and just trying to fiddle around and Tinker around the

Edges with it I want to give it some proper maintenance so I’m going to strip the bike down completely I’m going to take the chain off I’m going to drop the fork out I’m going to take the handlebars off I’m going to take all the bolts out I’m going to leave those

Sitting in some evapor Rust overnight to try and get rid of the worst of the rust um the chain is going to have to go but I’ve already bought something for that which is a little bit out there but I’ll come to that when it gets to the time um

I’ve bought a new rear hub for it as well because again that is very Rusty and the wheel nuts will have to be dusted as well generally the bike just needs a good bit of Maintenance but honestly that’s pretty much all it needs there’s nothing insurmountable on this

Bike that will stop it becoming a beautiful fixp speed road bike again once I’ve had a good look at it so let’s get on with stripping the bike down I think it’s fair to say these brake cables have seen better days one top tip I would give you is if you’re

Taking a set of brakes apart and you’ve never done it before or in fact you’re taking any part of the bike apart and you’ve not done it before it’s always best to take photos of the orientation of washers and nuts and the spaces and where they exactly go just so if it all

Falls apart in your hands as you’re washing it you know exactly how it all goes back together again now on the point of these brakes as I mentioned before I think that they are too far out on the handlebars because because they keep connecting with the drops and so won’t fully engage

Now the only thing that confuses me about that is that these clamps for the brakes are 22.2 mm diameter uh which coincides with the smaller part of the handlebar here you can see that it’s a lot thicker by the stem and then it Narrows as it goes

Out towards the drops so as I say this will only fit at this extreme point of The Handlebar I think personally that the brakes should go up here much closer uh to the inside of the handlebar near the stem which will stop it fouling against the drops um but again these are

Only 22.2 mm and will only fit on this smaller part of the handle bar who knows perhaps they were designed to go up here perhaps they’ve slipped over time I don’t know however the new brake levers that I bought are 32 mm I think they are

So they’re a lot thicker on the clamp and they will go around this larger part of the handlebar and sit much closer into the stem which means that there won’t be any problems grabbing onto the brakes and them hitting the inside of the drops right so now I’m actually going to

Try and get these plastic lugs off the wheel nuts this one has come off quite easily and I can now see that it is just a push F and I imagine what has happened is that where the rust has developed on the wheelnut underneath the plastic molding it has just somehow fused the

Plastic onto the wheelnut I’m hoping I should be able to get a small flat blade screwdriver in between the flange of the nut and the plastic itself and just wiggle it out to get all four of the will nut covers off I would like to put

These back on because it is quite a nice uh finishing piece rather than just having the bare whe nut on the wheel uh it does look quite nice and I will keep this maintained from now so hopefully they won’t get as Rusty um so hopefully

I can reuse these to put back over once I have either uh left these wheelnuts sitting into some aapa Rust overnight or if they’re too badly rusted I’ll just change them out for some other will nuts as they are fairly bog standard 15 mil will nuts

Okay so I’m in two minds now about whether to take the bottom bracket out or not um it doesn’t feel super grindy there’s a little bit of resistance in there but it doesn’t feel gritty or grindy in there like there’s any dirt or detritus or anything in there so that’s

Pretty good I might ordinarily be convinced to take the bottom bracket out were it not for the fact that it looks like somebody has already tried to have a go at it and the splines are slightly burred over now I don’t want to make that problem any worse and I don’t want

To end up uh breaking the splines off completely when there’s not a huge need to take the bottom bracket out again if I could take it out easily I might have a go at it as I showed in a previous video where I replaced the bearings on a

BSA Square taper bottom bracket but as I say considering the fact that the spindle is turning quite nicely and isn’t too gritty or grindy I’m of a mind to actually leave it as it is until it gets super bad and then I’ll have no choice but to take the bottom bracket

Out so I’m going to leave that as it is for now because I don’t want to cause myself any more problems so I’m just going to go ahead and strip down what’s left of the rest of the bike these face plate screws uh that hold the handlebar in place are super Rusty so

I’m going to throw those again in some evaporust overnight just to see if I can reuse them if they don’t come up uh as well as I want them too these are Pence to be honest so I will just replace them but I don’t like to throw things away

Unnecessarily so I will try and take most of the rust off of those and see how that gets on um talking of doing things unnecessarily the bar tape looks fairly intact to be honest uh and given that rewrapping bars is one of my least favorite jobs again I’m inclined just to

Leave it for now until it really wears out and I need to do it again um it’s a fairly standard black quite foamy quite spongy uh bar tape so it does actually feel quite nice so again I’m loath to take it off when it’s actually not in

Bare condition so I will leave that for now and eventually replace it in time but for now I see no reason to take it off so on it will stay okay so everything up here seems super crusty and I can’t actually uh even get this top cap off the stem uh so

That looks like that’s rusted on as well I’m going to try and take these pinch bolts off the stem and then try and work the uh the forks loose that way to pull it down I don’t know yet whether there is a Starner or an expansion plug in

Here I rather suspect it’s going to be a starup and I’ve learned my lesson from my last video when I converted my gravel bike and I unnecessarily drilled out the starnut that was in the stero tube and a lot of you quite rightly pointed out that there was absolutely no need for me

To do that so I won’t be taking the star nut out this time if indeed it is a star nut um but at the moment I need to just try and work this whole headset and stero tube loose because as I say this top Cap’s not coming off and so I can’t

Get into anything underneath at the moment aha there we go so as I try and take the front wheel off and apply a bit of pressure a bit of persuasion at the front the uh top cap has released itself and the fork steerer has dropped down slightly inside the head tube so I

Should now be able to take the stem off oh wow that is super Rusty inside there but hopefully it looks like it might just be surface rust so I should just be able to give that quick sand uh and most of that should come off but the stem is

Off the top cap is off see if I can get these yet spaces off here there is quite a lot of rust just around the top of the headset bearing here so that is probably what’s stopping the fork falling out at the moment it’s that galvanic corrosion

That’s uh that’s actually holding it all in place so I’m going to try and take the cover for the bearings and the wedge that holds everything in place out now and then hopefully I’ll be able to drop the fork straight out oh and no surprise it is actually a starnut inside here so

Have no fear I will not be drilling the starnut out this time I’ll leave it in as I know there is absolutely no need to take it out you do not have to scream at your screen and tell me in the comments how wrong I [Applause] am okay that’s the wedge out and then hopefully now the fork should happily drop straight out and there it is and I’m happy to see that the uh the bearings here are caged bearings they’re not fully sealed bearings but they are caged I was worried they were going to

Be loose bearings up in the top of the head tube here but as I say they’re cage bearings so that’s very good so I’ll take those bearings out put them to one side for a good clean drop the rear wheel out and then I think we’re done for the

Night okay so that is one stripped down frame all I need to do now is take the bits inside give them a good clean up and leave the rusty bits uh soaking in some evaporust for the night uh actually there is one last job we need to do

Which is to remove this extremely Rusty rear Cog I will do that in another video actually cuz that is a little bit beyond the basic maintenance that we’re doing to the bike here so as I say I was say that for a separate video because if I’m

Quite honest it’s quite late in the evening now that I’m recording this so I’ll probably get this done tomorrow now I’ll get everything else cleaned up inside sat in some evaporust and then tomorrow morning I can come back in and we can set about rebuilding the bike and

Getting it out on its first proper safe ride I’ll see you in the morning guys okay it is a new day we are back and what have I done well I have soaked The Rusted Parts in some evapor overnight and let me say I am always constantly Amazed by just how well this

Stuff works it may not be perfect and there are still some pitting marks on some of the bits but considering just how Rusty especially the pinch bolts on the stem face plate were when I took them off last night I think they have come up unbelievably well so yes so

There they have all been soaked in a vaporus overnight I have completely washed the frame down and gone over it with a coat of gt85 and it now looks absolutely beautiful there are a few little marks and bumps on it but although it’s only been ridden twice so

I’ve been told it has been stored outside for a while so you have to expect a few bumps and scratches but that’s not a problem it doesn’t detract from the overall beauty of the bike so that’s done as well I’ve also gone ahead and changed the rear sprocket as well I

Am going to be putting that out in a separate video in a brand new series I’m calling Workshop Wednesdays uh so that will be coming out very soon look forward to that and that I think is about it so with everything now washed and cleaned and dusted it’s time to put

Everything back together so we can take this out for a proper ride okay so the first job I’m going to do is reinstall the fork and as ever we’re going to put a liberal helping of grease in there just to stop any dirt water or any other rubbish getting up inside the Bearings So just putting the top cap on there and doing the preload bolt up and with the star fangled not you want to make sure that you don’t grunch it too far down because if you do like that you’ll notice that there’s quite a bit of grinding in those bearings so you don’t

Want to tighten that preload screw too much so just back it off half a screw maybe but just make sure that there’s no excessive play backwards and forwards in the stero tube as it goes through the uh the head tube that feels pretty good and I’m going to leave the pinch bolts for

Now these are loose and I’m going to leave them loose for now until I get the wheel on and I can fully align the stem with the wheel because at this point I can’t really see exactly where the stem needs to go so I’ll leave that for now

Until I put the wheels back on so when putting the stem head plate on I’ve said this before in previous videos but it Bears repeating again that you want to make sure that all of these bolts are equally tight so you want to do them up in sequence that will then stop any

Undue pressure on any corner and make sure that the handlebars are in there Square s and tight if you just put the screws in gently first of all then you can just have a little play around with the handlebars get them to the point that you need them I’m quite lucky on

This cuz I can see some marks where the stem was fitted before where it was tightened up so that helps me to realign it this time and you want to make sure that you have about as much Gap at the top of the stem plate as you do at the

Bottom so you can see as much of the screws in between and again that will just make sure that there is equal pressure on both sides of the stem plate okay so when you get the screws just to the point that they’re starting to bite you can stop with the screwdriver and go

Ahead and get your trusty torque wrench if you have one and I would always recommend using one of these especially for small parts like this because it is very easy to overtorque them now it says here on the top of the stem that this should be tightened to 5 to 6 Newton M

So I’m just going to set that now and then we go around effectively one after the other doing half a turn on each screw and then moving on to the next one that way we know they’re all done up each Al at some point we should get a

Click from the torque wrench to tell us that they’re all done up to the proper spec there’s that one that one that one and then this one makes four so that’s now properly tightened up it’s in the right position there’s about as much Gap below and above on the stem face plate

So that is now perfectly tight perfectly square and you’ve got no worries that there’s going to be any pressure pushing on one side or the other okay so next up we’ll put the chain ring back on and I did actually completely take this apart because uh the screws that attach the

Chain ring to the crank were quite Rusty as well and I missed that last night so I left them soaking for about an hour this morning and they are now perfectly gleaming and chromy again so I’m going to put the crank back together and then I’m going to set about putting it back

On the BB and then with that done again a nice helping of Grease onto the axle of the BB just to make sure that the crank doesn’t stick to it and that you can get it off easily the next time you need to just helps to stop that galvanic

Corrosion when two pieces of metal are sat together for too long perfect and that bottom bracket as I mentioned earlier is spinning really well so I’m glad I didn’t try taking it apart because I think I would have had a few problems trying to get the bottom

Bracket out but yeah that spins lovely so no issues with that whatsoever right time to get the wheels back on then I can put the new chain on and I think there might be a few comments about this chain but I’ll get to that in a minute

So wheels on chain on and then I’ll finally get the pinch bolts done up on the stem and once that’s done I can get the brakes installed and then we’re done now when you’re putting a wheel back on a fix here you may well find that you’ve

Got similar screws here which I used to align the wheel to make sure that it’s uh dead center of the dropouts now this one is set up already so I don’t need to mess around with it but if you do find that your wheel is off one side or the

Other you can just adjust these screws to push the axle either way to realign that wheel so now I’ve got the back wheel back on I do need to screw out these alignment screws at the back here just to let the wheel drop further into

The dropouts once I put the chain on I can then screw these back up and that will pull the wheel out and take any tension up in the chain obviously because there is no deria on a fixed wheel bike which normally takes up the slack of the chain we need to use these

Tensioning screws at the back here to pull the wheel out to take up that tension in the chain but I’ll get the front wheels on first and then I’ll come back to that [Applause] okay front wheel’s on and that is spinning nicely now uh the only thing

Left to do now is to do up these pinch bolts on the stem so the handlebars are properly aligned that looks about good there okay handlebars are nice and tight but as I spin the handle bars there I can feel a little bit of play in that

Headset now so I’m just going to tighten down that preload screw at the top just to compress everything a little bit more just to get rid of that slight amount of play I can just hear a slight rattle there but to do that I will need to release the pinch bolts first because

They will be holding the steerer in place tightly and they won’t allow everything to be pulled together if they are done up tight so we’ll just take those off a couple of notches and then we’ll screw down that preload another little bit yeah that definitely feels better

And that will now give me hopefully a lot more confidence when breaking and there’s no backwards and forwards or even lateral play in the headset so let’s just realign the stem again do those pinch bolts up yeah no play there at all now that feels much better and

That is still turning nice and smooth okay with that done we are at the controversial point of the chain uh don’t laugh when you see this now I wanted something that was really going to set this bike apart and given that it has this beautiful black

And yellow theme I thought well why not go for a bright yellow chain now I bought this from AliExpress you can get color chains from uh reputable manufacturers in the UK I bought this from AliExpress hoping that it would be some kind of anodized chain unfortunately a closer look at it shows

It to be a KMC Z series chain now nothing against KMC although I’m not a huge fan of them because I’ve had a number of them split over the years but largely they’re okay but this one just appears to have had a rattle can thrown

Over it and I’ll give you a closeup of it now so you can see the massive amount of overspray on the rollers I mean this chain only cost a tener so you can’t really expect too much I’m not even sure whether it is oiled inside so uh once I

Get it on I’m definitely going to give it a good oiling just to make sure that it all moves freely and doesn’t seize up on me on the first ride so yeah it’s um it’s a bit of a controversial one but ultimately if I get a couple of rides

Out of it and then it falls apart I’ll have learned my lesson and I will go back to a standard silver or black chain but to get it on I’m just going to size it now and simply I’m going to do that by laying it down next to the old chain

And then cutting it at exactly the right length although I will need to cut one length less I’ve got that master link to go in now okay so as it happens and this is more luck than judgment uh the chain doesn’t need cutting at all it is

Already exactly the right size minus the one link that I need to take off so it doesn’t need cutting at all it should just go straight on with the master link uh and as I say once I’ve retension it with the uh tension screws at the back

It should work perfectly I say perfectly it should work perfectly in terms of length whether it will work perfectly as a chain who knows that remains to be seen but let’s get it [Applause] on okay so the Chain’s on and as you can see as I’ve loosened these tension

Screws at the back there is quite a bit of slack on that chain so I’ll now go about doing these up a bit at a time just to make sure that I don’t misalign that wheel so I’ll turn each side about quarter or a half a turn at a time okay

That looks pretty good that looks pretty much in the center actually it looks a tiny bit over to the right so I’m just going to tighten the left side a little bit just to pull it back over okay that seems pretty tension there you don’t want the chain too tight because you’re

Going to cause resistance and that’s going to then make it more difficult to Pedal so you want a little bit of slack in it but not enough so that it could obviously fall off either the chain ring or the sprocket at the back but now that

Has got a nice tension to it I can go ahead and do the wheelnuts up at the back and then I can go ahead and put on the crazy little seized plastic wheelnut covers just to give it a little bit of a Finishing Touch and finally we come to

The brakes now again these have been fully cleaned up and all the parts dusted so actually they look really really nice now okay we are in business the brakes are the only last thing to run now are the cables and then I think we are job done right so having gone to

Edit this part of the video of the buildup uh I got to the very last clip where I was putting the brake levers and the brake cables on and it seemed that something went wrong with the mic and so the final file the final video is completely devoid of any

Sound so just very quickly I I will explain what I did on that final video effectively I put the brake levers on and as I mentioned previously in the video I put them closer to the stem to the center of the handlebar so they no

Longer foul on the side of the uh drops I also put a little bit of gt85 PTFE spray on the cables before I fed them through the cable housings I always like to do that I know some people swear by putting a little bit of lube or

Something on them but I really like to put PTF spray on them just to give them a little bit of a uh frictionless coating so they slide through the cable housings a little easier it’s not going to be too much of an issue for this bike

Because it’s only a tiny little bit of cable housing going through to the front brake and then the rear brake the cable is actually naked for the most part of the top tube here before then another small piece of cable housing to the rear brake oh and the other thing to mention

About the brakes is that I think I mentioned in the previous video when I went to go and pick this up that the brakes were set up for European style braking so the front brake was on the left hand side here I’ve now set it up

For UK style braking so I’ve moved the front brake to the right hand side I’m not entirely sure why there is I don’t know why we over here use the right brake as the front brake uh but in Europe they use the left and I think in

The United States they use the left as well if you know why leave it in the comments below because I’d actually be quite interested I’ve Googled it before and I couldn’t really come up with any coherent answer so if you are an old school bike Tech and you know exactly

Why uh we use the right brake over here and left brake in America and the EU for the front brake please let me know in the comments because I genuinely want to know there’s one very important thing I’ve just remembered because I know a lot of you will be asking the question

How much does it weigh so I have my trusty scales here so let’s give it a quick measure to see how it weighs okay front wheel off the floor 11.96% so nearly 12 kilos of fixed speed Beauty uh I actually weighed the wheels separately earlier because I had a

Feeling that they were going to be quite weighty as they are 50 mm AO deep rims uh the front wheel came in at 2.6 kilos and the rear wheel came in at 2.8 kilos thereabouts uh and the frame itself is just under 6 and 1/2 kilos so yeah all

Totaling up to just under 12 kilos so that is quite weighty and it’s about the same weight as my gravel bike that’s just behind the camera uh which I am constantly moaning about however it’ll be quite interesting to see just how this performs on the road so finally

Let’s get it out for a ride right here we go then I’ve not ridden flat pedals in a very long time so this feels very Sketch we the Cru okay so downhill feels fine let’s see what uphill feels Like Well that took a little more effort and it still taken effort to be fair because it’s only a minor incline that I’m on at the moment but it still feels like pretty hard work oh well what cycling without a bit of a struggle Eh right now I’ve got my breath back a little bit more I suspect it’s going to be a lot easier when I put my clipless pedals and shoes on because coming up any sort of incline is uh yeah pretty difficult and I’m finding that I’m out of the saddle

Standing on the pedal straight away and it feels as I said earlier a little bit sketch to be wearing trainers and flat pedals cuz I’ve not done that for a long long time and it feels like my foot is going to slip off the pedal any moment

So it does feel a little bit unsafe so yeah with clip those pedals on I reckon I’ll be good to go and I might actually swap out the front chain ring for something a tiny bit smaller I think I’ve got a 46 tooth on the front at the moment with

A 16 on the back and my buddy Chris runs a 42 to 16 which he swears is the sweet spot so yeah I might take it down from a 46 to a 42 but otherwise I’m pretty chuff with how this has turned out it’s uh it’s an absolutely beautiful looking

Machine and to top it all I got it for free the brakes cost me £10 the chain as I said earlier only cost me £10 and aside from a couple of brake cables which are Pence each yeah completely free bike who can argue with that right

I’m going to head back down the hill and enjoy this ride back home now so thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed this one look out for Workshop Wednesday coming very very soon and if you’ve got any maintenance jobs that you’d like a video on that you don’t

Quite know how to do yourself and you’d like a little bit of instruction let me know and I’ll get a video up as soon as I can all right guys well thank you very much for watching as ever I’ll see you in the next one take care yeah definitely need a smaller chain

Ring