The Lizzyville Coaster: Finished!

Did you want to start at the beginning?

Here is the finished bicycle, the one-of-a-kind 2007 Lizzyville Coaster. A few more shots from different angles:

The life-saving Nashbar long-reach caliper. Certainly for the price they're very nice brakes, being dual-pivot and all. They also allow a large amount of clearance. Although the bike's currently got 700x23's on it (a tad narrow I know) it probably supports up to 700x35's, which would make this practically an off road bike.

Here's the rear drivetrain. You can see the pine-cone lacing, but it's really only noticeable when looked at head-on, which is a pity. I usually do a round-up summary at the end of my projects, but I think I'll skip it this time, the bike speaks for itself. Maybe I'll just do a quick one...
What went right:

• The paint job looks pretty professional, only a few runs and minor mottled patches.
• Finding parts on eBay is pretty easy, as long as you take your time.
• Having built several bikes before helps, as you've got a stock of spare parts.
• The Vuelta rims are pretty, and seem very tough.
• Having a basket is awesome.

What went wrong:

• No matter how pretty the paint is, it's not durable like a powdercoat. It'll be 6 months before it's destroyed.
• The decals look like they were drawn on by a 3-year-old with no hands.
  
• Using a frame that's so old you need special long-reach calipers.
• Although steel's a nicer ride, I probably should have used an aluminum frame, as the rainy winters will rust the bike out quickly.
• A bit heavier than I would have liked, but that's probably only in comparison to my bike.

All in all, a worthwhile addition to the team of projects here at commonmode.

This is the bike as it looked waiting to be delivered. Just chilling in sub-zero weather in Park Slope, at 11am on December 1, 2007.

And for a moment of levity, on the way back from delivering the bike, a block from my apartment on 114th street in Harlem, I came across this. I think the moral of the story is New York will break your bike in half.

I'll miss you Lizzyville.

A month or so ago, it happened that I needed a floor lamp for my room. I was coming back from lunch in midtown and I saw a huge flashy "sale" sign emblazoned on the window of Restoration Hardware. I didn't know anything about Restoration Hardware, so I walked right in expecting to find a great deal on a floor-standing torchiere. I picked one, a reasonably understated modern design with a halogen bulb and dimmer, and asked the sales clerk how much it was. Oh, she replied. You're in luck, today it's 33% off. And that would make it...? $699 for the floor model.

The reason I bothered to bring this up at all is while I was browsing the rows of illuminating devices, I noticed next to particularly expensive items were small stacks of brochures. In these brochures was practically nothing useful/pertinent to aid you in making your purchasing decision. Instead, it was filled with "glamour shots" if you will of the item in question set in various lights and poses, with various good-looking people. It seems as if when you're about to put down a month's rent for a light fixture, you're buying not only the ability to see your own two hands at bedtime but a little chunk of status as well. Gosh, I thought, this here bike is certainly swanky enough to warrant a brochure, after all it's got status and sex appeal written all over it. Well, you can see how that little idea turned out here.

The Lizzyville Coaster: Assembly

Were you looking to paint a frame?

Ahh, truing wheels while simulating a high-Q fourth order switched capacitor bi-quad.

Here's where the creativity comes in: I wanted to do a unique wheel lacing pattern. I originally intended to do a snowflake pattern for the front wheel at least, which is beautiful but totally impractical and hard to keep true. Since I can't hang around to keep the wheels true (do you know of a bike shop that would true a snowflake wheel?), I opted for "two-leading, two-trailing" also known as "pine cone" lacing. It's still eye-catching, but totally practical as it's really just a re-distribution of 2-cross wheel lacing.

It's pretty when looked at head-on, but that's about it.

A direct closeup of the rear hub shows the pattern. Unfortunately it's a whole lot more pronounced on the rear hub, which is high-flange, than the front. The truth is that "3-leading, 3-trailing" is a whole lot more impressive as it groups all the spokes into only 3 groups of 12, whereas this wheel has 4 groups of 8.

Before anything, unpack the frame and make sure it wasn't destroyed by FedEx.

The actual bike assembly is straightforward. First, I greased and installed the bottom braket and fork. It's important to liberally grease the headset races and bearings. Then you take the cranks, bolt them on, put the wheels on, measure the proper chain length and then attach the pedals. Mount the saddle to the seatpost, grease it and insert it into the seat tube. Mount the brake calipers on the frame--oh, nuts.

Oh, SNAP.

If it's not clear from the photo, these calipers are too short for this frame. What I hadn't taken into account is this frame was designed for 27" wheels, which are just a tad larger than 700c's. So I needed long-reach calipers. I was a week away from a deadline, so I went into panic and ordered a pair of Nashbar long-reach calipers for $24.99, and had them over-nighted. Crisis averted.

Something's still missing...

Continuing onward, grease the stem quill, insert into steerer tube and tighten. Bolt the bullhorn bars (which are really hacksawed drop bars) to the stem. Attach brake levers--awh, nuts. The problem is that a standard handlebar diameter is around 24mm, but flanges to 26mm at the bolting interface to the stem. The brake levers bolt to the 24mm section, except that on this handlebar the 26mm section extends left and right in both directions, making the lever placement awkwardly wide. It's the day after Thanksgiving, and you desperately need to assemble a bike and you're in Manhattan. What do you do? You go to Larry's 2nd Ave. Bicycles Plus, the best bike store I've found so far in Manhattan. Not only do you get the usual selection of high end parts you'd expect to find in a boutique store, there's a huge assortment of secondhand parts. Moreover Larry speaks French and Spanish, in case you have been reading this blog and haven't had the slightest clue what's been going on. I got new drop bars (which I promptly sawed down to bullhorns) for $8. I also bought grip tape, cable ferrules and a bike basket there.

After these initial hiccups, it was smooth sailing thereon out. Mounting the basket to the fender bosses on the front fork, routing the brake cables, fixing the brake cable down with zip ties (I'm a prize idiot, we know) then wrapping the bars with grip tape, and the bike is more or less done.

Click ahead to see the finished product...

The Lizzyville Coaster: Painting a Frame

Wanna know where I got all this junk?

Before even thinking of painting, I did two things to the frame. First, I removed the brake cable bosses from the top tube, reasoning that they were ugly and we didn't need a rear brake (which is patently wrong, as this is a coaster and thus has fore and aft brakes) [no one should ever say I'm smart] so I guess I'll have to zip-tie the brake cable housing to the top tube. Speaking of ugly. Second, I sawed off the rear deraileur hanger, as that's something we really won't need, and it makes the bike more symmetric.

Dremel tool use #1001: making irreversible mistakes faster than you can think them through.

So we've got a grungy frame that's 20-odd years old, and we want to re-paint it. How do we go about doing this? First, we need to clean the excess grease off, any of the variety of orange grease cutting products work fine for this purpose. Once we get it more or less clean, we start sanding. I used a combination of 150 and 220 papers. Here you can see the four different levels:
bare metal, the white primer, turquoise paint, and clear topcoat.

Yeah, I was pretty unhappy at this point with the lugged frame.

That's all well and easy for the straightaways, but the lugs and stays were a total nightmare. After about 10 hours of laborious sanding and swearing, I got the frame and fork more or less down to the original primer. I didn't want to go for bare metal all around, since I felt I might weaken the frame by taking off too much metal in some places.

An almost naked frame.

My primary concern is the long-term durability of the finish. Haha.

First I put on several coats of primer, then let it dry for a week. During the week, I went back to New York for school and stuffs. While there, I researched how to best put a durable layer of color on this frame. It seemed that the best solution is a baked-on powdercoat, which is more or less like the glaze on ceramics, and is super durable. The only drawback: very toxic, and oh, did I mention the need for a large oven? So I did the next best thing: automotive epoxy paint. They make low-temperature curing finishes, and the guys promised me it's the hardest spraypaint there is. Problem: still need a spraygun and air compressor. So, a trip to Sears covered that. The irony here is that the bike frame cost around $50, and the paint ended up costing $150, and the compressor and spraygun also cost a total of $150. At least now my mother can fill her car tires faster and with more precision than ever before thought possible.

Either I was "Ghostbusters" for Halloween, or I'm in way over my head.

Anyway, I went ahead and bucked conventional wisdom by doing the darker color (blue) first, since I wanted to do the logos on top in orange. Here's the first coat drying, so far so good.

This color is unofficially known as "masking tape blue".

I had a vague idea of how I wanted to do the logos. I was going to freehand transfer the logo from a printed image to masking tape, then use an exacto knife to cut the stencil out. Then, out of the blue, the logo changed.

Hahaha uhmm... oh eff.

Daunted but not discouraged (read: foolhardy), I went ahead and tried to do this anyway. Here's the stenciled masking tape, ready to be traced out with a knife.

I'm sure there was a better way to do this, and I don't want to know what it is.

It was by and large an unmitigated disaster. The loops of the L's, e's, and y's and z's were closed. My eyes also started to tear from the intense concentration during the cutting/tracing. Once those were cut out, I sprayed the second base layer of color.

I'd say this is more of a pumpkin orange.

I let this dry for four times the recommended hour, since I had some fine detail around the logos and I didn't want to peel off any paint when I removed the logo masks. Once I did, it came time to apply the final clearcoat, which is basically liquid epoxy to put a durable hard finish on the paint. Once I finished coating the frame, I had some extra left in the spray gun, so I decided Arches and Parmesean cats could use a "durable, weatherproof finish" and I clearcoated them. Kidding!

I'm clearly neglecting some other work doing all this.

Here's the final finished frame. Honestly, I goofed up a good deal, it's far from perfect. There are several epoxy runs because I didn't properly adjust the spraygun to account for the higher viscosity of the epoxy versus the base colors. I also make the mistake of painting the frame in too close proximity to the fork, resulting in a somewhat matte finish in some areas. due to they spray-off painting one on the other. Nevertheless, it was a good effort. Here are some detail shots.










Let's put it all together!

The Lizzyville Coaster: How to win at eBay

Want to go back one?

With the surging popularity of the fixed gear cycle comes hordes of vendors looking to make a quick buck off newcomers who don't know better. Just because a fixie has fewer parts than a conventional road bike doesn't mean it will cost any less, and by tapping into the fanaticism and mythos surrounding these bikes they've managed to open a whole market for parts which perform the same function as extant products, but at absurdly inflated prices.

Take for example the front hub. Unlike the fixed rear hub which is fundamentally different than a casette hub, all modern forks accept the same 100mm front hubs. Knowing this, and assuming you're going to be building your fixie from scratch (versus a conversion, where you get the whole front wheel for free), are you going to choose a top-of-the line road hub like the Campagnolo Record front, which weighs 116 grams and retails for $94.99 at Colorado Cyclist--notorious for selling things at MSRP in this internet markdown day and age--or this Phil Wood high-flange track hub, which weighs 225 grams and retails for $138? As a matter of fact, the Ultegra 6500 front hub is currently on sale for $19.95 at Bike Nashbar and weighs 197 grams. Although it's unfair to compare full retail prices with sale prices, it illustrates a related point which is that boutique items rarely go on sale, whereas you can't Google without finding a sale on last year's road component group.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, and this is not a phenomenon unique to fixies but more generally tied to the explosion of eBay as a venue for re-birthing secondhand items, the word "vintage" is finding new use in place of the word "junk". Although the heyday of US velodrome racing was between the two world wars meaning many high-end parts aren't made anymore, unless you're interested in owning a piece of history (a legitimate endeavor in itself, but then maybe you should think twice about riding it around Manhattan) there's no real reason to pay triple the price for something that's available newer but lacks the "vintage, has been collecting dust for 50 years behind someone's lawnmower" flavor. Even worse is when they find things that were already crap when they were new 50 years ago, and try to pass them off as high-end collectors' items.

Perhaps the best advice for online shopping is caveat emptor, which is sound advice for life itself.


COLLECTING THE PARTS

The best way to buy parts for a project like this is slowly. Impulsive bidding is the best way to get a bad deal; usually the thing to do is search one item, add a dozen of them to your watch list, then let them all end. This gives you a good idea on the price spread, and from this you can self-impose spending limits for the particular part.

STRUCTURE

This is the most interesting sale, and as such should be done first. The reason it's interesting is it most likely the most expensive, and also might come with some extra parts. It's highly improbable that someone selling caliper brakes will "throw in" a set of hubs and pedals, but with a frame sale any of those are possibilities. The frame I ended up getting is a 52cm Schwinn Traveller frame, constructed in the mid-80's. I did a bit of research on these frames, and the general consensus is they're excellent durable frames, if weight isn't a big concern. As this isn't anything near a racing bike and won't have the deraileurs or cassettes to weigh it down, this frame should suit the purpose just fine. This frame came in decent shape with a fork, headset, seatpost, crappy seat (I threw it out), stem, handlebars and brake calipers. The headset is in excellent condition and I suspect it's newer than the frame itself; the bearings are round and the races are completely unmarred.

What a delicious color... not.

When I build this bike up, depending on the final geometry taking wheels into account I may have to swap stems, but for now I plan on using the stem and bars the bike came with. For saddle I just pulled one from my pile of parts at home.

DRIVETRAIN

And this right here is pretty much reason enough to go single-speed.

I'm partial to Shimano Octalink® cranks. Unlike the conventional square taper cranks, the Octalink system uses an oversized axle, and engages the two cranks with a toothed interface, and on the whole feels a whole lot stiffer. One drawback, and I've noticed this on my Dura-Ace Octalink track-specific cranks, is the crank bolts can undo themselves due to the backpedaling from braking. This leads to some play, which can quickly ruin the cranks which are made from a relatively soft aluminum alloy, as they're bitten into by the steel bottom bracket axle. Fortunately this isn't a problem with a coaster.

Anyway for the cranks I splurged a bit. I got an Ultegra FC-6500 39/52 double crankset for $28.07, which means I don't have to buy a separate chainring. Ultegra's a bit high-end, but at that price they're a steal and it's a sexy looking crank. The other advantage of going with a Shimano road crankset versus a "vintage" track-specific crankset is the Shimano BCD of 130mm ensures there will always be a availability of different sized chainrings to experiment with. The crankarm length is 172.5mm, which is longer than the traditional track length of 155-165, but I felt that since it's a coaster, having a little extra torque at your disposal is helpful. Think of it as a more user-friendly introduction to single-speeding.

To mate this crankset I got an Ultegra BB-6500, for which I paid $31.01. That's steep and arguably the worst deal I got, but I justified it by saying that the bike's not going to go without it and it's a good bottom bracket. What actually happened is I forgot to bid on an Shimano 105 BB which ended up selling for $17, and in a fit of frustration I overbid on the Ultegra BB so here we are. When the cranks arrived, I discovered they didn't come with bolts, so I headed down to a local bike shop (LBS) Missing Link, where I got a pair for $6.

The pedals and chain I had extra from my pile of parts from home, so they came free. As mentioned before, the 16 tooth freewheel also came from my pile of parts.

WHEELS

It's actually a two-pack of hula-hoops for midgets.

This is the most exciting part of the construction, as there's most room for originality. The rims I chose were Vuelta Stylus rims, which are cheap "beater" aero rims. I chose them for two reasons: at $60 a pair new, they were a reasonably good deal, and second they are red and matching. Never underestimate style as a factor in a single speed design. I originally wanted to go with a Mavic Open Pro front and MA3 rear, which are unquestionably better rims, except then I had to find 36 hole hubs, for which no good deals existed that I could find, so in the end these were more cost-effective. The other advantage is they're pretty much bomb-proof, a necessity in New York. For hubs I ventured outside of eBay and got a surplus Specialized front hub for $5.99, and a sale re-branded Dimension flip-flop rear hub for $29.99, both from Bike Nashbar.

High-flange bolt-on rear and a low-flange quick-release front.

Spokes are an interesting question. They're impossible to buy off eBay, because for a given rim and hub configuration, the spoke length needs to be specified down to the millimeter. Good online programs exist to aid in spoke length calculation, although my favorite is the Excel spreadsheet program Spocalc. You really don't want to be buying spokes used anyway. For the spokes, I found amazingly that Colorado Cyclist had the best deal, at $0.50 per 15ga straight spoke, sold in increments of one with brass nipples. I needed 267mm and 275mm, and I was just about to buy the spokes when I remembered that I actually have those lengths by DT Swiss (go to the page, it's got a cool intro movie) in my bottomless pile of parts. What's even better is instead of straight 15's, they're 14/15 butted spokes with alloy nipples. They're actually way nicer than the application calls for, but hey when they're free...

The rim tape, tires and tubes I also had in my pile of goodies, so these came free too. You might begin to imagine that I have racks upon racks of surplus parts of every possible variety (imagine if you will the first scene in The Matrix where Morpheus takes Neo down the armory in his introduction, and you get the idea) and you'd be pretty much right. I'm a pack-rat much to everyone I know's chagrin.

BRAKES

Oh, stop it.

Because the frame came with calipers, I didn't have to worry about them. It looks like these are actually calipers off a Trek 1000 series bike, which would make them pretty snazzy for a bike like this. Unfortunately (this is a recurring problem with eBay) the calipers were missing the cable adjustment ferrules, so I went to another excellent LBS Mike's Bikes and they gave me a pair for free! All I needed now were levers and cables. The cables, like spokes, are cut to measure so can't be bought used. Fortunately they're pretty cheap at $3.99 each from Nashbar. The levers are Cane Creek in-line levers designed to give drop bars some stopping flexibility when riding erect. (oh stop) They come in two variants, machined aluminum and carbon fiber. As appealing as saving 9 grams per pair with the super sexy carbon, it just didn't justify the $30 premium they called, so I got the aluminum pair for $18 on eBay.

Now that we've got everything we need, are you ready to paint a frame?

The Lizzyville Coaster: Inception

If you hang out in the city you can't escape noticing these odd looking bikes, often straddled by even odder looking riders. Unlike the bike your midlife-crisis afflicted dad just bought, which is described by a plethora of buzzwords (OCLV, V-brake, Octalink, SUP, SPD, Exa-Drive, Hyperglide, SiS, ISIS, Hollowtech, every year there's a new few) the beauty of these bikes lies in their singularity of purpose. Designed for the Velodrome (a bicycle racetrack), they can only do one thing: go very fast on smooth, flat surfaces. They don't have any braking mechanism--save for jamming backward on the pedals, since a fixie by definition can't coast--because during a race where riders are speeding upwards of 40mph inches away from each other, one person stopping suddenly can end disastrously for all.

The evolution of these tuned, sleek machines took a sudden turn when someone decided to bring one out onto the streets: a decidedly more hostile environment for both the bike, which is accustomed to well-maintained surfaces, and the rider, who has to deal with cell-phone talking Starbucks-carrying drivers oblivious to anything not blinking on a Blackberry screen. Numerous pitfalls notwithstanding, there are many valid reasons why fixies are great for city riding:

• Less to worry about while riding. With no gears to change, you'll never think about them! Besides, in most flat cities low gears aren't necessary.
  
• Less likely to get stolen. This is less true now than it was 10 years ago, thanks to the boom of fixies and the ingenuity of the aftermarket part vendor devising ways to make something as simple as a chainring look precious. (The word "bling" comes to mind.) In the past though, a bike on the street with one speed was usually a piece of crap, the money hits were the carbon-titanium-aluminum kitchen sinks.
  
• Easier maintenance. I don't care what people say, maintaining a multi-speed bike, especially one with index shifting and a compact 9 or 10 speed drivetrain is a lot of work. Something's always scraping, getting out of true, or not shifting on a dime. Worse, even if you manage to find a sweet spot, all it takes is a small bump against a parking meter or a Chihuahua getting caught in the chain to send it all to hell. Not so with a fixie! All you have to do is check your chain's in good condition, and grease the bearings once a month or so.
• Good workout. Stopping the bike with your legs is hard work! I've heard this is detrimental for real riders because it teaches bad habits and messes with the circularity of your stroke, but for regular folk I see no such drawbacks.
• Teaches excellent riding technique. This is what fixie riders elaborate upon ad nauseam, unfortunately they're right. If you decide to get on a bike without brakes and take it out into the street, provided you're not flattened in the first few days you begin to develop a heightened awareness for the road. You stop looking a body's length in front of your tire and start analyzing activity two, three blocks ahead. If you watched too many action movies as a kid, you also start imagining targeting reticules floating around your vision, an HUD displaying pertinent tactical information and a three-dimensional map overlay (think Google Earth).
  

One must also keep in mind that it's possible (recommended) to ride a fixie with a front brake and a single brake lever. This is often colloquially referred to as the "oh shit handle" or some variant thereon.

Following this brief and altogether too opinionated introduction to fixies, let's turn out attention to the particular bike we'll be assembling.

DESIGN GOALS

The rider is a 5'8" female, about 115lbs. Thanks to her litheness I can relax a bit over the abuse the bike will take, although that's only half the picture as the bike will be ridden around Brooklyn and Manhattan. As the introductory vehicle to single speed riding, I'm opting to go for a single speed freewheel, which means you can coast. There are two reasons for this. One, the initial fixed gear experience is disconcerting. It's like one of those volunteer psychology studies you did in college, where some grad student grasping at a meaningful dissertation topic puts you in a room and make you play a driving video game except the screen's reversed so left means right and vice versa: completely doable with all your concentration, except after 10 minutes you have a splitting headache. Being a gift, I'd like the initial experience to be something other than "nauseating". I dunno, something positive, like "collarbone breaking". Kidding! The other reason I don't want to make it a fixie is that sometimes you want to use the bike to get somewhere without expending a lot of energy. Call me out of shape, but when I ride my fixe I always work up a bit of a sweat braking all the time. Maybe I have poor fixie riding technique, and I should really be coasting through everything totally disregarding the rights of way of others. Whatever. The point is, in the interest of efficiency it's going to be coaster. I'll use a flip-flop hub so that when curiosity strikes there won't be any technical obstacles to going fixed.

To choose the right frame, we need to analyze the rider's body geometry. Fortunately I have a good photo for that purpose. With judicious application of Photoshop, we arrive at the following result:

Help, I'm a ghost!

As I said, this is going to be a freewheel affair. As such, it's commonplace to use a ratio slightly lower than comfortable on a fixed, since going downhill fast won't require spinning the legs. I have a spare 16 tooth freewheel, so I need to determine a chainring size to mate that. I get by just fine with a 48/16, which gives an even 3:1 ratio. The rider in question hasn't done a lot of riding recently, so to make things a bit easier in the beginning I'm going to go with a 42/16 or 39/16. Since 39 is often the second chainring on a multi-speed crankset, I'll go with 39/16, which yields a ratio of 2.43:1. To get an idea of the cruising speed, if we assume there's going to be a 700x28 tire, the approximate wheel circumference is 84 inches. If we further assume she's going at an 85 rpm cadence (she's a runner, and the optimal running/cycling cadence according to my triathlete friends is around 90) that's going to be 85 revs/min × 60 mins/hour × 2.43 rotations/rev × 84 inches/rotation ÷ 12 inches/foot ÷ 5280 feet/mile = 16.5 miles/hour. Okay that's a tad slow, but we're in New York, taking it easy never hurt anyone.

THINGS YOU'LL NEED

Let's go over the BOM (bill of materials). For the structure, we'll need:
A frame, fork, headset, stem, handlebars, seatpost, saddle.

Then the drivetrain, which is usually a whole complicated affair in a multi-speed bike, is reduced to the fundamentals in a single-speed:
Cranks, bottom bracket, chainring, chain, freewheel, pedals.

And this is going to be driving the wheels, which are comprised of:
Rims, rim tape, inner tubes, tires, spokes, hubs.

Next, we need some way to stop, so we're going to need:
Brakes, brake cables, brake levers.

Finally, the finishing touches:
Bar grips/bar tape. Basket. Decals. Lock. Lights.

Find out how to procure these items in the next installment, when we tackle the caprices of eBay!