I had to quickly build a new bike after losing frame last year, so almost turned low-end cruiser to rat-bike rigid 29er

Hello everyone, a little building story from my last year.

Last year my city/food delivery frame gave up on me and I didn't put enough attention to prepare for the oncoming reality, which was fully my fault, so I had to frantically look how to quickly put together new machine and with very limited budget; something affordable in expendable parts for daily use, preferably no suspension, mix between comfort and keeping decent average speed, reusing as many old parts as possible… Ugh, let it look half decent, please, please.

My ex-girls cousin was selling his bike at the time, he didn't knew how to approach it and asked me for help; he's not much into cycling and absolutely not the bike specs.

I did basic maintenance for him before, so had time to inspect the thing – not a fan of city/cruiser style bikes and this particular line of Romet and model "Vintage" as I've checked is probably their absolutely bottom of the barrel quality models currently available, but also the more I looked the more I was noticing ok-ish presenting hybrid hi-ten 28"/700c frame under all this overbuilt steel parts; tire clearance was surprising and there was this single very, very appealing feature that finally sold the bike for me, about that later.

I upgraded seatpost, handlebars and stem to alu, steel fenders to plastic-alu Sks (and biggest possible dutch style mudflap for front, love this things and so does the drivetrain, especially in winter) to accommodate tires – lost frame was 26er MTB and I got used to 50c/2" tires, so decided to try make it work here too. Saddle, alliexpress hollowtech, cranks and Dartmoor candy pedals came from my old bike, same as threadless stem conversion, with spacer to hide it.

Old tire-dynamo light, kickstand, chain cassing/protector and rack had to go (kept the rack in parts for possibility of touring in the future, it looked well made).

For now wheels and drivetrain are stock (cleaned and regreased) – it's only Shimano Tourney 1×6 freewheel, but coming from single speed background I had zero expectations towards gears and took what was given – with new cables and paired with narrow-wide 34t the 14-28t freewheel is honestly almost enough range for my style of cycling and the terrain.

I have used 8 gear cassette wheel and derailleur waiting to be installed, but with gears working fine I had less motivation and first I gotta figure out how to convert this wheel to solid axle with nuts on both sides, cause I couldn't make quick release work on… semi-horrizontal droppout. The selling point mentioned earlier.

When I'll get better frame in the future (already have a favorite from local small company) this bike will grow into nice monster-tracklocross.

Clearance around cranks looks very promising for even around ~47-50T-something chainring, so I could optimize for more skid-patches and I always wanted to try fixed gear with more forgiving tire size. I needed puncture protection and Schwalbe Marathon GTs catched my attention with weight/size/listed protection ratio, so I decided to gamble with my observation that Schwalbe has standardized casing sizing and in my experience 50c/2" from them was ~46mm on internal 19mm rim. Glad to say it worked here too (very underrated hardshell btw, I'll drop a rewiev on Youtube soon). Fork looks like it could fit even 2.15"-2.25" tire without fender. Purpose made tracklocross frames usually cost more than I would like to comfortably spend, so I was hoping for finding such bike in the wild to convert and life just pushed it into my hands.

For now I really like this thing; on low pressure rolls just as I would imagine 90s MTB but (almost) 29er, I managed to make it lighter and more responsive (honestly if I could only have one, it's always responsive bottom bracket over better gears). Fits a bit small for me (which is funny because cousin himself is 2 inches taller, so I get why he wanted to get rid of it lol) and pedals clearance almost overlaps showing they didn't planned it to be set with both big tire and fender, but it's all small things, overall I'm very happy with how the build went for a small budget and I kinda rediscovered cruising around for fun while listening to podcasts/videos as weekly cardio.

Thank You for reading. ^^