Surly Steamroller - slave commuter sled

Great, they're the ones I've been looking at... love to get some Mavics or H Son built up but I'm on a tight budget as well

Yeah likewise, but it's minimum ~£200 inc labour to do it with decent rims. Would definitely recommend these though

Thanks @Glanton might go for these myself then... if you don't mind me asking, where did you get them?

Got mine at evans cycles - http://www.evanscycles.com/products/miche/xpress-track-wheelset-ec029342

Not really much of an update here, but I finally accepted the inevitable - the surly's gone from SS to fixed. Went down to Condor a few weeks ago and got a 17t cog and tried it out for a few weeks with both brakes still installed. After deciding I'd stick with it I put the rear tyre back on the right way round (having switch to the other side of the hub), lost the rear brake and zip-tied the left lever.

The chainline isn't as great as it was with the freewheel, and I was wondering how safe it would be to use these cog spacers from Velosolo (http://www.velosolo.co.uk/shoptrack.html)? Would I just end up shearing the thread?

nonetheless, still a very fun ride...

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Nothing huge here, but a shiny new bit has arrived. It soon became obvious that the Ambrosio cranks didn't have the roundest ring, and had really bad tight/loose spots. The chainline was also more than a few mm out. I thought if I was going to get a new bottom bracket to fix the chainline, I may as well find some NJS wankery to pair it with, thereby going someway to addressing the roundness issue and gaining multiple cool points.

I found some used SG75s on ebay and managed to get em for a fairly reasonable price.

They were visibly used, but a little de-greaser had them looking pretty good imo

Any advice one chain rings would be good. Currently I'm debating whether I should go for a cheaper miche/stronglight one or cave to forum expectation and get a Sugino/Aarn/sram one. Are there actually any advantages to the latter other than looking good?

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Your cranks need to take a chainring of 144bcd. Think the miche ones are 135 so will not fit if so.
I'd see if you could fine a used sugino 75 or dura ace one. They are perfectly round and look classy.
Aarn / factory 5 look tacky to me although seem to be good chainrings. Also seem to be on every single mash parallax on pedalroom

Think the miche ones are 135

Miche Primato Advanced chainrings are 144 BCD.

There are the Gebhardt ones in 144bcd too. They're quite nice, though a little cheaper.

Yeah I had a look at those. The current setup looks abit rubbish with the anodized ring/silver teeth (which the Gebhardt track rings have), so I think they're a no go.

logical purchases <<<

Aarn / factory 5 look tacky to me although seem to be good chainrings.

Yeah, I'm not so keen on the factory 5 lattices but I can't help but think the aarn ones look pretty nice...

Hubjub have the Aarn ones. 70 quid new. Which is a lot of money.
Just decide if you think it will fit your build. Personally I think it might, but I like understated so would go with something else.

TA also make good and reasonably priced chain rings.

So the chainring dilemma has been solved pretty quickly. Again by virtue of aimless eBay browsing, I found what I was looking for. Someone was offering a brand new black 48t Truativ chainring for £25, which is pretty well under retail as far as I know, and similar to the price of the cheaper ones mentioned earlier so I pulled the trigger.

Given that omniums have such a good rep, I figured they probably come with pretty decent chainrings?

(Inb4 mixing sugino and sram blah blah blah)

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Current guise

A few alterations have been made in the past few weeks - enough to warrant a little post imo. All the planet-x logos and flecks of silver everywhere had kinda bugged me from the beginning, which was quickly dealt with using a rattle can and a HHS approved seatcollar (courtesy of @UTVACW). I also went a bit weenie and got some Deda carbons forks.

Ribble had 10% off everything, and £65 for a half kilo would clearly have been foolish to turn down. (they also happen to be the only carbon 1/8" forks I've found that look any good/are skinny + are < £100).

Added bonus (worrying anomaly?) - they came in 70g less than advertised!

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back from lbs. Unbelievably did everything (cut the fork, installed new star-nut, transfered crown race and rebuilt) for £17!

apologies for wank quality

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Looks good! How does it ride with the new fork? I'm looking at swapping my cross-check fork out

Although the rake is about a cm more (44mm vs 36 on the original I think) the shorter crown to axel seems to kinda counteract this (?) in terms of how it handles. Basically the actually steering feels uncanny compared to the old one, and acceleration is noticably better. Also feels particularly good uphill of course...

Would highly recommend

This is an extremely rowdy 'roller

10/10

Great thread and great finding out about all the progress. Have you thought about clipless pedals? Makes a huge difference.

That was the aim. The only one worthy of the full 10/10 is this though...
http://www.pedalroom.com/bike/kawasaki-green-steamroller-59-13188

Yeah I have - and actually I've got them on my ribble, but since I'm commuting to college on it I don't really have the time/space when I arrive to be messing about with the shoes

nope, I prefer yours.

Get a pair of wound-ups on it, a CK headset and maybe a carbon seatpost and it's untouchable*.

*obviously this is a) very expensive b) subjective

that is praise indeed. thanks.

I've had fevered dreams about getting some wound-ups on this, but they're soooo pricey, and actually not all that light. I did switch up the parts bin saddle for a selle SLR XP which I managed to swoop on ebay though. +1 carbon there I guess.