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Anyone currently riding a fg Brompton? Would you do it again, other than for the lols?
Yep, as @Howard has pointed out, my Brompton is fixed gear. Has been for a couple of years now. This is mine:
I would do it again - indeed, I will be doing it again on my next custom Brompton as it's the only way I'm going to get the gearing high enough with a track hub on the back. If I fit a freewheel then the gearing's going to be too low unless I fit a chainring so large it'll interfere with the fold. It's basically using a magic gear (50/14 I think) and as you say the tensioner only comes into play to take up the slack on the fold. I'm running it fixed because I've got a Powertap track hub on the back end (with custom end caps to reduce the OLN to 115mm) so that ticks another of your boxes. You can't skid it, as if you try the internals of the Powertap rear hub will undo themselves and the torque tube will try to exit stage left, but being a boring old giffer doing rad whip skids not really on my list of priorities. Can't say I've ever really had a problem with pedal strikes with 170mm cranks. You can get pedal strike if you really bank it over, but hey, Don't Lean.
Brommers-
Found your thread, outstanding work. Powertap looks to be the cleanest solution, but probably requires a better machine shop than I have (which looks more like a dremel and a clamp than your setup). If I abandon the belt drive, that should open up NDS crank or spider based power meters, but google is unclear as to whether the strain gauge would foul the frame, particularly on the NDS approach (4iiii, Pioneer, Stages). Pedal based PMs not acceptable because I'm not a monster.
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Nice conversion. Having proverbially peaked under the Xmas tree (well, my wife's eBay account), I suspect I may be receiving a Brompton (2nd hand, obvs) on Dec 25th, but because fixeh is 4eva, I want to do a similar conversion to yours. Would you be so kind as to reveal what the chainline is on the Brompton, and did you have to use a specific chain tensioner? Cheers!
Dyrlac
finger_jockey
After a recent insurance payout, I'm thinking of getting a folder, but I have certain (esoteric and probably unsound) requirements: (a) fixed gear; (b) a front disc brake (no rear brake: the ugliest thing about a Brompton is the cabling); (c) bullhorns, and (d) a power meter (probably hub based). Bonus points for a belt drive. Ben at Kinetic suggests that this is buildable, but not necessarily rideable. Anyone currently riding a fg Brompton? Would you do it again, other than for the lols? This would be N=6 (summer, CX/turbo, TT, SS, FG/winter), so we're we'll beyond practicality considerations: the alternative is something exotic and/or italian, but that's a bit boring.