M'lady's Raleigh Single Speed Conversion

OK so after squirreling away bike parts in the Autumn, and hibernating in the Winter, I had a clearout in my room. I sold a frame, some wheels and an old BSA Metro I'd tidied up a bit after failing to fix the Sturmey Archer gearing.Back on it, I've been messing about with two projects, with the aim of freeing up some floorspace; one a ladies Raleigh town bike, and the other a large-ish mens road frame set up as a single speed, named by the previous owner the "Tangerine Dream".

So onto the Raleigh: This frame originally started out in my hands about 2 years ago, and became the first birthday present for m'lady (by first birthday present I mean the first present I'd bought for m'lady, and not that it was her first birthday). Over the course of about a year, it went through many, many changes to make it the road bike she wanted. From this:

To the frame being powdercoated:

 To adding bright orange cables and bartape.

Sorry this is the only picture I actually have of the orange stuff.

 I've never seen a bike change so much: The levers were too big for her hands, so we ended up with old school BMX levers on the flat of the bars (cue new cables with ends to fit BMX levers); the cranks went compact to give her a better range than the previous 52-42t setup ever could have (cue the bottom bracket spindle being too long as the new cranks had a slightly smaller square-taper hole). The honey-coloured, copper-riveted Brooks B17s was knicked by some utter donkey-penis faced shitbag, and was replaced with a white Selle-Italia-ladies-something-something-not-as-good-but-works-well-enough (cue swearing and cursing).
Rat-cage pedals were swapped out for platforms, bar tape went from orange to purple to orange, cassettes and chains were replaced.
The brakes went from old school pain-in-the-arse-to-set-up Weinmann centrepulls to slick Tektro extra-long reach sidepulls, with the intention of swapping out the 27" wheels for 700C's in the future when the time and money was right.

This bike was built up from scratch, using any parts I had spare, a mashup of mountain and road bike parts; this bike gave me every problem with sizing I never ever asked for.
It was the biggest pain in the arse that took weekly sessions of messinabout, until finally it ran smoothly, and the problems tapered off.
 
This was about a month before we found a new(er) road bike in her size that would do the job better...

The analogy that sprung to mind...

As much as I'd like to play the martyr, m'lady getting a bike where all the bits definitely worked together was a great idea, especially seen as it gets used daily. I don't ever regret taking it on myself to build her a bike, as I learnt a hell of a lot about what bike bits go together and what ones don't.

So after her pedals, saddle and handlebars were swapped over, I was left with a weird mish-mashy thing that resembled a bike and needed to be dealt with.

Although I count the wheels I built as a success (7 speed mountain bike hubs built into 27" rims), the frame didn't have a derailleur hanger, and the gears were always the problem I was trying to fix. Although it was kind of a shame to waste a good cassette hub, I decided that the easiest way to get this bike out of my life out the door was to get a converter kit and make it a single speed: No worrying about derailleurs; no messing with cables and hi-lo stops; no trying to get a bottom bracket axle that's the right size so the double crankset sits inside the reach of the front derailleur, whilst still fitting inside the shell of the frame, and not being so small that the cup goes so far into the shell that the lockring is balanced on about two threads... In short; 1 gear good, 14 gears baaaad.

So, after giving the frame a Halfords rattlecan paint and lacquer job, I put the frame and wheels together with some upside-down Humpert Toulouse bars, as seen previously on The Commodore. 

The rattlecan job wasn't perfect, but the powder coat was pretty chewed up in places, and made for a good undercoat.

The saddle was originally from Misty the mixte, and although a prestigious Brooks, in all fairness it's a standard black vinyl seat.

I used one of the aforementioned Weinmann centre pull brakes on the front, but because I wanted the cable routing to be easier and shorter, I had to use a sidepull brake on the back: By flipping the barrel adjuster and pinch bolt round, it meant the cable could come down the frame and up from underneath the brake (fairly standard routing on stepthrough ladies frames).

 The GB Synchron sidepull on the rear was donated by a guy at work. Weirdly it's an early version of a dual pivot sidepull brake, and works pretty well.

The brake levers were new from ebay, and the grips came from the previously mentioned BSA Metro I tarted up.

The singlespeed conversion kit is basically a pack of spacers and one cog, which meant that the chainline can be aligned pretty easily. The hubs are old Shimano Exage ones back from when Mighty Martha II was a Marin, laced into some Rigida alloy 27 x 1 1/4" rims.

The single crankset was bought new from ebay as was the chain, and the pedals are some old ones I had kicking around. The 46t chainring and 16t cog in the back gives a fairly easygoing gearing.

The SKS mudgaurds were left over from when the bike was m'lady's commuter, so the only other thing to buy was new brake cables (Jagwire bright red to smash off the "Ford Aquamarine Frost" paintjob) and some cable clips that I found on ebay.

 So there we go; a fairly bright start to 2015, and with the bulk of the parts ready to go, "The Tangerine Dream" shouldn't be far behind.

  Holy Spokes, Batman

EDIT: Just to say, this just went up on ebay, so, you know, get bidding and that.