Hey everyone,
I spent a decent amount of time during the last few weeks working on my “everyday” bicycle, the Creme Cycles Vinyl Solo Black. I’m using this bicycle since two years to go shopping or visiting friends or whenever I’m outside with my camera, looking for the next great picture…However, the longer I kept riding the bike, the longer got the list of things, that I’d like to change about it. Parts like the saddle or the rear hub and the backpedal break suddenly used to freak me out everytime I took the bike out for a ride.
It was about time for a little customization…
I had something like a clear plan in my head. First of all, I wanted to change the internal gear box in the rear hub against a singlespeed hub…a loud one to be exact. Second of all, the saddle basically felt like a wooden plate, which is not quite comfortable when the streets of your hometown are a best-of collection of the greatest potholes ever.
It was clear that those changes would cause a couple of additional changes. Adding a singlespeed hub for example meant I’d no longer have a backpedal break, which was a good change, I just needed to add a second rim break.
The most difficult thing about all of this was looking for new parts that would fit the bike. Some measurements on the Creme Cycles Vinyl seemed a bit extraordinary to say the least, but after all I got lucky and found some singlespeed bike parts by a local BMX brand / shop. Great looking parts and effortable at the same time, it didn’t take long to decide whether or not to buy them.
Another quick fix was the saddle problem. My order at the BMX shop brought back memories of my old bmx pizza saddle… I instantly knew I had to add this saddle to the bike, though it proved to be some extra online research time until I found an adapter that would fit the 25,4mm bmx seat post to the 26,6mm bike frame. For some reasons these parts are rare…
Adding a new rear rim break was another difficult part about the whole work on the bike thing, as I never did that before. Figuring out the right length of the cable and how to make the break actually stop the wheel took some time. All in all, I installed the whole rim break system about a dozen times until it finally worked out pretty well.
What I like most about the customized version of this bike, beside of the pizza saddle of course, is the sound of the rear hub. Adding a singlespeed hub to the bike, finally got me a roadbike, that not only looks like one, but sounds like one, too. Plus, I don’t need to use a bell or yell at people anymore, which is definitely a huge advantage…
I could write a lot more about this bike build, however, I thought it would be fun to make a video about it, too. And that’s exactly what I did. Of course, talking to a camera and looking for a nice angle extended the whole process of the bike build even more, but making videos is something I enjoy a lot, so taking some extra time for the camera was not much of a big deal…
So, in case you’d like to actually watch me working on the creme cycles vinyl, too…
What do you think about the result? Would you like to know more about the bicycle? Feel free to tell me in the comments below…
-Dennis
DennisTheCyclist 