Friday, October 14, 2005

If It Ain't Broken, Fix It Anyway...


So I'm trying to muster the testicular fortitude to convert the Monkey to a fixed-gear mountain bike, and then actually ride the damn thing offroad. Not really an ideal frame for it, I suspect, since the bottom bracket sits pretty low and I tend to pedal-clip stuff now with it set up as a single speed. Add into the mix that I'll be running some skinny cross tires, and the situation worsens. But the bike is not getting much action right now, so why not? Insurance is paid up.

Only problem is, I'm looking to use a nice Paul disc WORD hub that is freewheel only. Solution, of course, is to find a bolt-on cog and slap that baby on the hub where the disc rotor normally goes, flip the wheel around, and voila!...instant bombproof fixie wheel. Now, the only such cog I know of in production is a nice Ti one made by Boone. No experience with Ti as a chainring/cog material, so I don't have any beta on the durability of these beauties. That unknown, plus the premium that Ti commands (considering the likelihood that this bike won't see the lion's share of my offroad riding), plus the incongruous and unnecessary bling factor, means I'm still searching.

LeVeL Components seems to have the right idea, but their cog interface is proprietary and I'm not looking to invest in a new hub right now. So the question is, who makes steel ISO disc brake bolt-on cogs?

3 comments:

DT said...

Yea, but from what I hear you could end up dropping a lot of dough on drill bits as the cogs tend to waste them quick.

I've been runnin my Ti disc adapter cog now for probably around 16ish months and it basically had no wear the last time I checked it out.

I'll let you borrow my LeVel components hub laced to the Salsa Delgado if you want. I won't be using it until I've finished building the front wheel up anyway. Give you some more time to figure out what your doing.

gwadzilla said...

fixed off road?

I don;t get it....

this notion of question has been shared with DT

even after answers...

I just don't get it

Blue-eyed Devil said...

Just did my first real off-road fixie ride tonight. The short answer to your "why" questions is: FUN!

I'll throw up a write-up on my experience soon with a little more detail and, perhaps, explanation.