I bumped into a fellow riding a noisy fixie on Merri Parade a few weeks back. I rode up beside him and said hi. We got talking and by the time we’d ridden across to Heidelberg road, he had made a couple of interesting points about cycling and Melbourne that stuck in my mind.
One of these points was mentioning he’d dropped in to Human Powered a few weeks before hand. “You guys have got some awesome gear but I wanted to set this one up on the cheap.” And I …

Down in the workshop people ask us lots of questions. The latest thing that has come to mind is how to get chain tension on a frame with vertical dropouts. You might want to do this for single, fixed or hub gears. I’ll list them in order of complexity.
Use a chain tensioner, that could be an old rear mech (Dura-Ace or Record if you like) or something made for the purpose by Rohloff or Surly to name but a couple of brands. It almost goes without saying that this is …

So the time has finally come to unveil the bike I’ve been dreaming about for the last year or so. Taking LittlePixel’s idea, from bikeforums.net I’ve cooked up my own version of a fixed-wheel Brompton.
Starting with a 2009 S1E Brompton in clear laquer, I built a wheelset around Velocity Aerohead rims with a Phil Wood hub at the rear and a Pantour suspension hub at the front. I’m running on slick Schwalbe Stelvio tyres.
I’m running a cut-down Soma Noah’s Arc bar, clad in Velo Orange elkhide leather sleeves matched up …