Turning a freewheel hub into a fixed hub?

Hey guys,

ive been trying to read into it on sheldon browns website and im getting a bit confused, im sure there has probably been a thread on this before and if there has please point me to it as i have failed to find it.

i have been offered a very nice pair of wheels which have seen very little use by my friend for my soon to be fixie. but they are geared, he has taken the cassette of and i am trying to work out how to turn it into a fixed wheel or if its even possible basicly...

Can you convert a freewheel hub into a fixed hub?

How do you do it?

is it cost effective?

cheers in advance for all he help

you have crossed a few different terms and thier meanings in your post...

does the hub have threads on the hub shell... which are there to take a freewheel..

or does the hub have a seperate free hub body with slots along the length to hold the cassette in place?

If it is the later... there isn't much you can do apart from buying a surly fixxer, which are pretty expensive and not really worth the cash, especially when you can get fairly decent hubs for the same price.

if it has threads for a freewheel.. you can put a normal track cog on followed by a bottom bracket lock ring to hold it in place. Extremely sketchy and not reccomended. It is known as a "suicide" conversion for obvious reasons. There are no guarantees that the thread is deep enough for both a cog and a lock ring, so is prone to slipping, even with plenty of loctite.

The other problem you may face with both set up's, is the chain line and the wheels dishing. search sheldon for more infor on that.

Best bet - buy a new rear hub, will save you lots of money and headaches in the long term

Good advice there from the last post. If the wheels came off an old touring bike for instance it's probably threaded. I had a similar situation to work out myself a couple of months back. My hub was threaded but rather than go for a 'suicide' hub I screwed on a bmx freewheel with 16 teeth and run it as a single speed, I'd recomend running at least one brake if you go for this option! With no wheel building skills and limited cash you can buy a cheap freewheel and the shop mechanic charged me £30 to re-space and re-dish the wheel to get a good chain line. In defence of the suicide hub? I've not ridden one but I went to the bike track today and the guy that teaches under eighteens said to go for it as long as I ran a front brake as well he claimed they never used the lock rings on there club bikes(used for teaching)?

Good advice there from the last post. If the wheels came off an old touring bike for instance it's probably threaded. I had a similar situation to work out myself a couple of months back. My hub was threaded but rather than go for a 'suicide' hub I screwed on a bmx freewheel with 16 teeth and run it as a single speed, I'd recomend running at least one brake if you go for this option! With no wheel building skills and limited cash you can buy a cheap freewheel and the shop mechanic charged me £30 to re-space and re-dish the wheel to get a good chain line. In defence of the suicide hub? I've not ridden one but I went to the bike track today and the guy that teaches under eighteens said to go for it as long as I ran a front brake as well he claimed they never used the lock rings on there club bikes(used for teaching)?

I thoroughly recommend you run two brakes if you are riding freewheel. Even if the brake has plenty of power just takes a little water+speed+single wheel braking to send you sideways.

They probably never use lockrings on club bikes because they are for velodrome use only, where braking is thought of a dangerous (pile-ups from behind) the reason why track bikes are brakeless in the first place, back pedalling is frowned upon.