The best thing about bikes is riding them. However, depending on where you live, winter may curtail your ability to do so. Sure, you could fritter away the cold and dreary months by Zwifting, but do you really need more screen time in your life? Instead, put your hands and your mind to work and learn how to master your machine by undertaking a winter bike build.
A Fixed Gear (Or Single Speed)
Are you a relative novice when it comes to working on bikes? Do you find it intimidating? Do you wish you weren’t totally dependent on the local bike shop?
A wise person and/or a very good shoe salesman once said: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This is especially true when it comes to learning how to work on bikes. Start simple! Making paper airplanes is how you get started in aviation. Pouring yourself a bowl of Lucky Charms is the first step in learning the culinary arts. And building a fixed-gear rig is how you begin to learn to work on bikes.
Thanks to the Great Track Bike Boom of the early aughts, there are about a gazillion suitable frames and parts out there for your fixed-gear project, many of which can be had very cheap. You won’t have to deal with the trickier stuff like tuning derailleurs or running lots of cables or bleeding hydraulic brake. At the same time, building one presents an opportunity to to learn essential stuff like how to install a bottom bracket or a chain—ideally on a cheap frame you won’t cry over if (or when) you manage to scratch it or worse. And of course you don’t have to spend much money, since fixed-gears don’t have very many parts.
Best of all, they’re great bikes to ride in the winter when conditions are slushy and salty, since you don’t have to worry about destroying your fancy drivetrain.
All of the above also applies to single speeds, except you’ll also want to add a rear brake.
A Vintage Gravel Bike Conversion
Okay, you’re not going to win any originality points with this one. Converting older hybrid and mountain bikes into gravel bikes is totally “a thing,” and at this point doing so is like being the 50 millionth person to sport a Nirvana t-shirt. Nevertheless, it’s a worthy intermediate-level project, and Nirvana remains popular for a reason, so there’s no reason to feel self-conscious.
A gravel bike conversion does pose some challenges, and the main one is finding a suitable frame. The good news is that there are innumerable rigid mountain bikes and hybrids from the grunge era that are viable for this purpose. The bad news is that, because gravel conversions are so popular, there are too many people who think they can get big, big money for that unremarkable ‘90s RockHopper. Even so, you should be able to find something cheap, since pretty much any rigid bike with canti brake bosses and decent frame clearances will do. Just figure out which tires and bar shape you’d like to use and go from there.
Unlike that fixed-gear, you will have to do a fair amount of cable routing, and if you really want to get fancy you can size up (or down) to 650B wheels. You’ll also have ample opportunity to experiment with drivetrain curation. Do you want to stick with that triple crankset? Do you want to go with a modern single-ring setup? Do you want friction shifters? The cycling landscape is awash with nearly-identical gravel bikes, so why not spend the winter building something with some personality and versatility?
A Classic Road Bike
Speaking of personality, no bicycle exudes charisma like a classic road bike. Light, fast, comfortable, simple… The industry keeps slicing those drop bar bike categories thinner and thinner—gravel road, endurance road, aero road, endurance aero road—but as anyone who buys cold cuts at the deli knows there’s such a thing as too thin, and at a certain point it becomes impossible to pull the turkey slices apart. A simple road bike with mechanical gears and downtube shifters is the very essence of cycling, and it can handle everything from fast group rides to solo dirt road excursions. Every cyclist should have one.
While people often associate road cycling with elitism and expensive equipment, it is in fact the most accessible form of recreational cycling. There are lots and lots of old road bikes out there that are worthy of rehabilitation, but go for a steel one if you can. Not only is it timeless, but it’s also accommodating of numerous tire widths. Use friction shifters and you don’t have to worry about how many cogs it has either. Classic road bikes approach fixed-gear levels of simplicity, but are about a thousand times more versatile. They’re light as gossamer yet not even remotely precious. Build up an old steel road bike and you can ride it 50 miles into the countryside or head downtown and lock it to a pole.
Extra Credit: Build Yourself A Wheel
These days it’s just assumed you’re going to buy a complete wheel “system” out of a box. However, every cyclist should attempt to build a wheel at least once. Not only is it immensely satisfying, but even if you only do it once the knowledge you gain from it is invaluable, if only because you’ll be able to true your own wheels.
By the spring your knowledge will have bloomed along with the flowers and the trees and you can ride your project triumphantly into the horizon.
The post Forget the Trainer. Build a Project Bike This Winter. appeared first on Outside Online.
Biking, Bikes, City Biking, Cycling
