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Who is the "Ealing fixie chick?"

Description from another place: "It was a different bike this time, but definitely the same girl, dressed in black breeches, yellow striped socks, a woolly hat and carrying a big old messenger bag. She was riding a brakeless dark green steel fixie with white deep section Velocity rims and white 'bar tape."

If you want durable, then don't buy very light road rims, get slightly heavier grade touring rims. I've had the same discussion on the ACF forum and the majority advice was to try DRC rims. I seem to remember that the DRC ST17 got recommended as did the Rigida Chrina.
The best price I've found for spokes is through Edinburgh Cycles who will also double check your spoke length calculations (or do it for you). I remember paying 25p for silver DT DB spokes last time I bought any. Ebay is a good source for boxes of 100 spokes and if you build a complete set, it's worth costing out to see if you'd save money by buying 100 at x £rather than 72@25-50p each. Many wheelsets end up with identical front and rea spoke lengths.
As for durable hubs, if you get hubs with cartridge bearings then all you have to do is pull the bearings when they wear out and swap in another set. The rest of the hub should be fine.
the post is here, should you wish to read it: http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/index.php?topic=46089.15

They have an odd chainline though don't they? I remember that it's something odd like 44mm.

My good friend Charlotte opened the engine flap of a bus that had tried to ride her off the road, pressed the emergency engine stop button, then boarded the bus, with her bike, told all the passengers why she had stopped their bus and then asked the driver for his details, wrote them down, photographed him and got off.

She says that some of the passengers heckled and some applauded.

If I remember correctly the standard letter form the bus company was the only response.
I've also heard of riders using helmet cams to get a result from bad drivers (bus company and Police, in one case!).

Parkers have them, about £4.50 a set for the genuine Campag ones, Ribble might have them, Mercian will have them, hell try Condor, you might lucky!

I fell off on Wednesday. Watch out for the white triangles on speed bumps that's all I can say. The paint hid the ice beautifully. I've put a hole in my only pair of tights too!

Try em on in Evans, buy em from Wiggle. Shaft your omnipresent cycle superstore!

They're reckoned to be good shoes, if I had £50 to spare I'd buy some.

I've never used them. Goldtecs on painted road dropouts.

I'm a fraudaxer...

3/32 is fine, if 3/32 chains survive mountain biking they'll survive street use on a fixed gear set up. I use the Miche sprockets in 3/32 width (Condor sell them) and the On-One CNC machined sprockets are also pretty good value for money. SRAM PC48 or PC58 are pretty cheap. Chain Reaction Cycles sell them in packs of 3 for £12 or so.

just get proper mudguards and stop moaning. They look much better than all this clip on rubbish and they keep the crap off your bike, saddle and clothes.
If you want carbon fibre looks go for the SKF carbon fibre effect ones, they look pretty good, even close up and they work. Unlike raceblades which wobble, don't protect you from the wet very well and scratch your paint.

I'm pretty sure that 4x onto a 28h rim is close to impossible. I'd imagine that the crossing points close to the spoke holes would cross the hub flange and over the edge of the next spoke.
4x is OK, for 36h and not ideal for 32h.
3x is fine for most applications.

Personally unless the rim is something special, I'd buy new rims and get the best value hubs you can source to match. I'd stick with 32 or 36h. 36 if you're heavy, but as you claim the bike won't get a beating I'd go for 32h since you'll have more choice of hubs.

Dave Yates is a top bloke, Mercian are lovely. I've a friend just got one and it's lovely. Cheap too for the amount of work that goes into them.
BJ has had some negative feedback on their customer service, I'm not sure I'd go there.

However, I had some repairs done to an old frame at Roberts and they were brilliant, cheap, fast and did a perfect job. (£45 for a repaired broken seat stay and adding a bottle cage mount, in 10 days).

This is one of the nicest frames I've seen for a while. I love the shape of the chainstays.
http://www.anvilbikes.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=186

edmundane find yourself a 700c wheel and mount it on the bike, it'll be very obvious if the clearance between the wheel and the forks/frame look ridiculous it'll be for 27"

something like this:

Just to clarify; 700c wheels are smaller than 27" wheels so you need brakes with longer reach. Otherwise they grip the tyres quite nicely!

Nice looking build. Why not swap out those brake levers for some aero ones and running the cables under the tape?

If you are using relatively narrow tyres 700x23c-28c then most puncture repair kits will only contain 2 or 3 patches the right size for that size inner tube.
If you go to Mike Dyason (http://www.mikedyason.com/productDesc.asp?session_id=5a68c33ebc8c3532bfccc65e86bf1f93&text_product_id=VP15MM) you can buy the very small patches in a pack of 100 for about £4, well worth stashing in the bottom of the tool kit!

Personally, I carry a small DHB (Wiggle brand) saddle pack with 2 spare tubes a 5/6mm allen key and a single Park tyre lever. That will usually get me home even if I have a problem with the first spare tube. The pack also contains a set of Park instant repair patches, but I've never used them, so have no idea if they're any good!

If you buy a presta to schraeder adaptor (50p from Wiggle) you can screw it onto one valve and then you can use any garage forecourt pump if you don't have one with you.

I also tend to buy my inner tubes in packs of 10 or 20 from Ribble and then just repair them in batches of 5 or so when I have a free Sunday afternoon.

Try BETD (Goldtec https://www.betd.co.uk/product_list.asp?CategoryID=15) their wheel builds are really good value for money - thy're only charging £30.50 a wheel for open pros including spokes (considering 36 spokes will cost you £18 and an Open Pro rim is about £30 it's hard to imagine beating their prices!)

The frame is lovely by the way, thinned lugs ! That's a sign of some real class!
Is it designed for 27" wheels or 700c. If it's 27" wheels you'll need deep drop brakes (if you want to run brakes).

I use road drops (old Cinelli 66s) with brakes. To get 'round the lower position I'm using a flipped stem to raise the front end a bit. The bike would look better with a quill stem, but then I'd have to raise it about 2" and it would look just as ugly as the A-head stem!

I only have to ride in from South London to South Kensington, so I don't spend much time in dense traffic.
If I was riding in heavy traffic then flat bars would make more sense and to be honest SS would make more sense than fixed if the traffic was really bad (there are just some times when being able to back pedal makes a lot of sense).

I think what you have is dried grease. All the light residues have evaporated leaving you a residue that looks like burnt on grease (you get something similar on the edges of frying pans and in ovens).
Does this sond right to you?

What you need is a solvent which will dissolve the grease, but not mark the paint (however, I would guess that the paint will be faded under the grease marks).
I would first suggest cloth soaked in WD40 and left in contact with the grease mark for a few hours, then remove with a sharpened piece of wood (either a "lolly stick" sharpened to a knife edge or a tooth pick).

If this doesn't work, try a cotton wool pad soaked in acetone (but check to see if it attacks the paint first) or possibly some citrus based degreaser.

The aim is to soften the grease and then scrape it off with something softer than the paint. Finally repolish with something like T-cut to get a nice glossy finish again.

It also depends a lot on what you want the hub for.
There's not much point paying for bling bling track hubs with no seals if you're going to ride them through the winter on salted roads.

You've forgotten Royce from that list - possibly the most expensive hubs available.

For general day to day use I'd list them in this order (cost lowest to highest)
System EX/Formula/IRO/Ambrosio/One-One LF (these all seem to be the same hubs made by Quando)
Goldtec
Paul/Phil
Royce (with road bearings rather than track bearings - available as an option)

Level seem to be ridiculously heavy.
Surly are over priced for what you get.

There are a lot of different models of Suzue - but there are "better" hubs for the money.

I reckon Goldtec are probably the best balance of cost/performance. Especially if you get BETD to build the wheels for you. They'll custom anodise the hubs for you if you ask them nicely enough.

When I were a nipper Hetchins had a show bike built up for a US show with a complete gold-plated Campag anniversary gruppo.
It was pure bike filth.

OCD [quote]eeehhhh vic - that guy must be mental. Perhaps he's in a circus or something.

Anyone here lock up their bike outside the Science Museum Exhibition Road entrance? I see it most days. Silver frame if I remember rightly.

A south ken massive!!!! I work at the V&A but the silver frame is not mine ....eeehhhh, what do you do round these parts????[/quote]

...and I work at the NHM, ther are at least 2 fixies here in addition to mine.

There's a whole page of dropouts here:
http://www.cccycles.com/drop-out.html

Where's the picture of the "correct" dropout?

Hippy, I've whispered a message to you. Log in if you're still interested.