Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Fixie on the beach!

Spring meant a Southbound trip to Hilton Head Island where the family did a lot of biking...

The South Carolina beaches are hard-packed enough to allow bikes with road tires to be used on the beach. The tires on my Raleigh fixie conversion are 700c x 26 and did just fine.


Gratuitous beach panda shot... please don't try this at home. The fixie is sporting new bars for the trip left over from the Roadster conversion. These were on the DL-1 as found, covered with rust. They cleaned up pretty nicely, but still have some pitting and rust on the underside.


The North Road bar/stem combo from the DL-1 replaced the Nitto track bars for the trip. I removed the rod brake levers and replaced them with a city bike lever from the good folks at Velo Orange. V/O also had these cool brown brake cable housings to match the Brooks and the leathery bits already on the bike. I left two of the rod supports in and used one as a makeshift cable guide. I also added the B-67 springer seat, bell and kickstand, which made for easy cruising on the islands great system of bike trails.


After the trip the fixie got a nice bath and full chain-off cleaning. Sand is insidious.