Commuting dilemma...your opinion?

colm_gti

Starting a 60km round trip commute next week, had planned to use the good bike, but a mixture of putting increased wear on it and having to leave it outdoors for the day has me reconsidering.

Was thinking about freshening up my steel bike with a 10 speed groupset so I could swap wheels between it and my good bike, but for the money I will have spent on it I could probably buy a second hand tiagra equipped bike.

My other option was to build up a cheap single speed, but is commuting that distance on a single speed lunacy? Relatively flat with an altitude gain/loss of 116m each way...

Darkglasses

I personally like the idea of a single-speed the best. If you can at all, I'd go for that one. Can you borrow a friend's one/"pretend" the good bike is a single speed to try it once?

Plastik

colm_gti wrote: »

Starting a 60km round trip commute next week, had planned to use the good bike, but a mixture of putting increased wear on it and having to leave it outdoors for the day has me reconsidering.

Was thinking about freshening up my steel bike with a 10 speed groupset so I could swap wheels between it and my good bike, but for the money I will have spent on it I could probably buy a second hand tiagra equipped bike.

My other option was to build up a cheap single speed, but is commuting that distance on a single speed lunacy? Relatively flat with an altitude gain/loss of 116m each way...

That'd get my vote. It's good to have the options.

seamus

You're right to think about a commuting-specific bike. My heart was broken with commuting on the good bike because I found myself either spending good money on replacement parts a couple of times a year, or scrimping and going for cheaper parts and putting them on my "good" bike. Neither of which I wanted to do.

I built up an old steel MTB Frame into a drop-bar commuter a year ago and I'm delighted that I did. Aside from being able to stick cheaper parts on it and not worry about wear and tear, it's also fully kitted out with the commutering stuff like full mudguards and panniers - essential for commuting, but unwanted on your good bike.

Singlespeed is interesting and a little fun. Some days if you're feeling tired it's nice to have no other gears so you can spin along without cursing yourself for wimping out. But other days when you're feeling energetic and have a strong headwind, the lack of gearing can be frustrating. On a really nice day as well, there can also be something really zen about singlespeeds because they're so completely silent. If you're on a nice quiet road with the sun beating down on you, all you can hear is the wind in the trees and nothing else, not even your own bike. Like I say, zen.

I originally built my bike up as a singlespeed but I found it made me a bit soft. That is, I would rarely make an effort to push myself beyond cruising cadence, so within a month or so I was completing the commute both ways without breaking a sweat. I wanted to use the commute for training, so I had to stick a cassette on the back which I much prefer now. It's still quite low maintenance as its 8-speed at the back and singlespeed on the front, but I have enough gears now to push myself along the flat and uphill, though not so much downhill.

Singlespeed are great for a hacker bike, maybe 5km trips around the place, or for proper "at my own pace" touring. But if you plan on using the trip for a bit of training here and there, not so much.

Building your own bike is always nice, but rarely cheaper than buying second hand. If you can get your hands on something which will take mudguards and a pannier, then that's the way to go.
Don't bother with the wheel-swapping. Have your good wheels on your good bike, keep the parts for the two bikes separate.

rp

colm_gti wrote: »

My other option was to build up a cheap single speed, but is commuting that distance on a single speed lunacy? Relatively flat with an altitude gain/loss of 116m each way...

I've done a similar commute (c. 32km each way) and a bit hillier, and my times fixed vs. geared didn't vary significantly - more from wind and luck with the lights than differences in the bikes.

Highway_To_Hell

I have a 60km round trip commute (I haven't being doing it too regularly of late) as well and do it on a fixed geared bike with no problems, like yourself I didn't want my good bike getting destroyed and I was able to put a pannier rack on my commuter as I hate using backpacks. Maintenance is really easy and to date as my route only has 1-2 hills I have not missed the gears. The one draw back is my ability to keep up with road cyclists I have no problem with normal commuters but the route I take is not a main commuter route as I have to skirt around the M50 so I don't meet too many cyclists.

Lumen

Rear gears are nice.
Front gears are unnecessary.
Integrated shifters are nice.

I'd happily ditch my front mech and use a single chainring as I never use the small ring whilst commuting.

10sp is overkill, but annoyingly 10sp Tiagra shifters are cheaper (on Wiggle, for instance) than 9sp ones.

The cheapest decent brifters seem to be 10sp Campag:

http://jedi-sports.de/Shifters/Shifters-Road/Campagnolo-Centaur-Carbon-Ergopower-Power-Shift-Controls-10s-201::3205.html

I wouldn't worry about rear wheel compatibility, a set of Campagnolo Khamsin are cheap and strong, perfect for commuting.

doozerie

I don't think that commuting that distance on single speed is lunacy, that option is what I'd go for. Before I maimed my singlespeed bike I was commuting 11km each way on it without a problem. The odd time I did a 20km journey on it and that was fine too. Those figures are a far cry from 30km each way, but I wouldn't expect the extra distance to negate the benefits of single speed.

For me the benefits are minimal maintenance, cheaper to maintain due to the chain lasting longer (though singlespeed parts can be expensive to buy initially e.g. the price for short bolts for the front single chainring is mad), less stuff to break if the bike takes a spill, and exercise. The exercise bit is subjective though - I chose a gear which had me spinning a bit on the flat, I've seen people ride singlespeed gears that seemed to require a steep downhill plus a tailwind to get them moving. Each to their own, but high gearing would hammer my knees and potentially cause more harm than good.

As already suggested, pick a gear on your existing bike and see how comfortable it feels to do your commute in just that gear. You'll quickly find a gear that suits, or you might decide that a single speed has no appeal at all. You can buy "singlespeed" cogs that actually consist of 2 rings so that you could hop off the bike and manually move the chain to the other cog if/when you want - that'd be less hassle than swapping the wheel out and turning it round to the cog on the other side, though personally I don't think I could be bothered with swapping at all.

Singlespeed also opens up the option of fixed gear as well, should that have any appeal. I rode fixed for a few months on my commute and it was certainly fun but on a route with a lot of traffic it made stuff like cycling up the inside of stationary cars and buses a bit of a pain 'cos all too often the left pedal was in danger of clipping the kerb. My commute got faster when I switched back to singlespeed.

The only potentially tricky thing with singlespeed is getting a good chainline when setting it up for the first time. I started with a track flip-flop hub, which was less than 130mm wide and resulted in a less than ideal chainline - it worked, but it was very "sensitive" so at the first sign of wear in the chain the chain hopped off the cog. I eventually bought a pre-built wheel with a 130m hub and this has proved more reliable. I think a good hub and a good freewheel are worth paying for, but they are not cheap. My current hub seems fine but my current freewheel is a "standard" Shimano one and the seals are rubbish so it needs re-lubing regularly.

Plastik

Are you going to do all your winter training on your good bike? To hell with that, now is the perfect opportunity to put N+1 into practice and purchase a second-hand winter training/commute bike If you have lockers/shower in work (you must surely have access somewhere in there) then there's no need for the extreme of panniers or backpacks. Go with gears. It opens up all other options to you in terms of finishing early and heading home via Howth ... etc ... etc ...

colm_gti

Thanks for the input guys. I did commute on a fixed gear bike at the beginning of the year, but that was when I lived 5km from college so it wasn't the same as a 30km each way commute, though I did really enjoy spinning around on it.

Like was mentioned, it's the ease of maintenance that is the major attraction to a singlespeed. I'd rather build one up on a track/ss frame too, as opposed to using a road frame with horizontal dropouts. Forgot about rear wheels having threads on both sides and the option to switch between different sized freewheels mid ride, that'd be handy...

I'll be using the commute spins for some light zone 2 training so won't be killing myself anyway.

Think I've almost sold the idea of a SS to myself...

smacl

Lumen wrote: »

The cheapest decent brifters seem to be 10sp Campag:

http://jedi-sports.de/Shifters/Shifters-Road/Campagnolo-Centaur-Carbon-Ergopower-Power-Shift-Controls-10s-201::3205.html.

And here was me thinking of upgrading my old xenon shifters to veloce 10sp to get something decent. Ah well, must try harder...

colm_gti

Plastik wrote: »

Are you going to do all your winter training on your good bike? To hell with that, now is the perfect opportunity to put N+1 into practice and purchase a second-hand winter training/commute bike If you have lockers/shower in work (you must surely have access somewhere in there) then there's no need for the extreme of panniers or backpacks. Go with gears. It opens up all other options to you in terms of finishing early and heading home via Howth ... etc ... etc ...

Haha, that's a good point, though I didn't want to get into my winter training plans here

Lumen

smacl wrote: »

And here was me thinking of upgrading my old xenon shifters to veloce 10sp to get something decent. Ah well, must try harder...

Sweet! My Google-fu is weak today.

G rock

Another vote for single speed/fixed here.

I used my single speed as a commuter last winter, and have since spruced it up with new fixed gear wheels. Commute is 29k each way with about 300m climbing each way, so not exactly flat. (pic in the fleet thread).

Admittedly it's only been used in the past week or two, but so far so good!

I'm not so good with bike cleaning, so it suits to have something I don't mind getting a bit dirty.

Alanstrainor

Another single speed vote here. Although my commute isn't as long as yours, I've really enjoyed my singlespeed after over a years worth of commuting, and probably a couple of thousand KM. I had to laugh at Seamus talking about it being Zen...because I completely agree!:D

My commute can be over 10KM each way, and I find it fine, there's a few tough hills here and there, but it turns into more of a challenge, a few weeks in and I found the hills didn't bother me at all.

dermiek

I take it if someone was setting up a "SS" bike, not necessarily the OP, its feasible to have a single on the back and a double or triple chainring on front, for wimping out on hills, etc ???

seamus

G rock wrote: »

I'm not so good with bike cleaning, so it suits to have something I don't mind getting a bit dirty.

Mudguards. Big, dirty, all-the-way-around mudguards. I've ridden through mofoing floods on my commuter and the bike still just look a little dusty. I've been riding it a year and haven't cleaned it once.

Maybe it's just the hills then on my commute that have turned me off the singlespeed. Freewheeling downhill...yawnfest.

I take it if someone was setting up a "SS" bike, not necessarily the OP, its feasible to have a single on the back and a double or triple chainring on front, for wimping out on hills, etc ???

It is actually possible, but you'll still need a derailleur on the back to take up the chain slack. If you just want a couple of wimp gears with the no-maintenance of a SS, then internal hub gearing is the way to go.
But if you want to do it on the cheap, you can't get much cheaper than an 8-speed block at the back and a single chainring on the front.

dermiek

seamus wrote: »

It is actually possible, but you'll still need a derailleur on the back to take up the chain slack. If you just want a couple of wimp gears with the no-maintenance of a SS, then internal hub gearing is the way to go.
But if you want to do it on the cheap, you can't get much cheaper than an 8-speed block at the back and a single chainring on the front.

Thank you for the quick reply, Seamus. saves me googling it.

billyhead

What about a decent hybrid second hand. I have 54km round trip and got an all alluminium flat bar road bike second hand which does the job. The commute takes just over an hour each way, and Its and 8 speed bike which gives me more options on the road. I have Crud racer mud guards fitted and just carry a backpack on my back

daragh_

+1 for Singlespeed.

Every day to work and back for the last 3 years. 30k a day. A little slower than on my good bike but in all that time I've had one mechanical.

Also, you should attach some lead weights to it, just to make it fair on everyone else.

Lumen

I've tried this 'pick a gear and stick with it for a week' thing and failed completely.

There are times when I'm hammering along at 40kph on my commute when a 53/15 feels just perfect, and this gear allows me to hit 50+kph with a tailwind/draft.

But pulling away from the lights on a 53/15 is just plain slow, and is not far off what Hoy uses on the track (51/14 or 52/14), and I do not have legs like Hoy.

Whichever way you look at it single speed is slower, but whether that matters more or less than the maintenance issue is debatable.

colm_gti

My next question...is it worth converting an old road frame to a SS using something like this, or should I just get rid of the yellow bike and shell out my hard earned on a dolan pre-cursa with a fork that can fit a brake caliper?

The old frame being my yellow 7 speed yoke in the classifieds...

seamus

If you're going to go SS, then my advice would be a SS frame. I used this (which I can sell you for a good price) and my experience was that getting the chain line and tension right was tricky. If either the chain line is wrong or there wasn't enough tension, then the chain has a habit of popping off under high loads. Usually when you're hammering uphill standing up. After a couple of incidents which involved a bar end into the kneecap and a stem to the testicles, I managed to get it stable by tweaking the chain line and applying massive torque to tighten up the tensioner.
But I never managed to quite trust it 100% afterwards.

A proper fixie/SS setup is much easier to get the straight chainline and tensioned chain without the risk of crippling agony. IMO.

lennymc

didn't you have problems with your knee a while back when you were using the other fixie for commuting? Id agree with plastik - , buy a geared bike that you can train on, and use as a commuter, winter bike etc. single speeds are great if you only need a single speed, but, knowing your plans, i dunno if thats all you need.

doozerie

If going the singlespeed route, then personally I'd use your existing frameset. I used my 20+yr old road frameset, it had the older style dropouts - not horizontal ones but deep ones that were at an angle - and they worked fine for both fixed gear and singlespeed mode without a tensionser. Having said that though, as the chain started to wear/"stretch" I got to a point where replacing a full link in the chain with a half-link would have been a little better to eliminate the minor chain slack that had developed. Using my existing frameset meant that I knew the resulting bike would fit me, and given the difficulty in getting reasonable money for a second hand bike it also made the most sense financially.

If I decided to do away with the fixed gear option entirely I'd have considered a chain tensioner at that stage but only if necessary. Whether you'd need one is obviously down to the gear you choose to go with and the chainstay length. You can muck about with the chainring and rear cog sizes to influence the length of chain and you might find a combination that gives you your desired gear without needing a tensioner.

As for chainline, mine worked very well when I changed to a 130mm flip-flop rear hub. You can mount the front chainring on either side of the spider so you get to adjust the chain line by a few millimetres there. And if you choose to just use your existing rear wheel with a singlespeed conversion kit (where you fit a single cog with spacers either side of it where the remainder of a cassette would otherwise live) then you get some flexibility in the aligment of the rear cog too.

NeedMoreGears

Asking myself much the same question at the moment. I use the good bike over the summer (sic!) for commuting about 40km/day 4 days/week. Now that it's coming into winter I'm wondering will I "wear it out" by continuing to commute through the winter.

I built up a frankenstein bike from an old MTB frame and put some slicks on it. It's fine as it goes but very heavy and not especially aero. It takes me about 10% longer as compared to the good bike, which is just exactly enough to make it a pain in the a$$ when I'm starving hungry on the way home or running a bit late on the way in. TBH if I had a decent second hand road bike with cheapo components, I'd probably use that. At this stage I'm inclined to keep going on the good bike and replace parts when they wear. It's simply a much nicer bike to commute on.

I'll probably change my mind later in the winter (or maybe not). Decisions decisions.

doozerie

NeedMoreGears wrote: »

At this stage I'm inclined to keep going on the good bike and replace parts when they wear. It's simply a much nicer bike to commute on.

That for me was one of the appeals of turning my existing (old) road bike into a singlespeed/fixie for commuting - I already knew that the frameset was a comfortable fit for me (plus ripping off the gear levers and mechs was a pleasure as they'd been getting more and more contrary with age, so another plus!). It felt like a new bike once converted so I even got that "new" bike buzz, well kind of.

Using a bike that I actively disliked each day would bother me a lot, I'd definitely look at alternatives in that situation. Back before I had the luxury of owning several bikes my road bike was my commuting bike, my shopping bike (with rucksack on my back), my weekend ride bike, and my racing bike for what little I did. It was a real hassle - I'd get to the end of a week of utilitarian use of the bike and it would need some (usually minor) maintenance to ensure it was ready for a spin of a few hours at the weekend, such as swapping to clipless pedals. It was an effort to make time on a Friday evening to sort the bike out, but when I didn't I sometimes paid the price of 5 days of accumulated grit and glass in the tyres working through to cause a puncture, a manky chain turning into a squeaky earache mid ride, brake pads with accumulated muck not reacting like I'd want them to in a bunch, etc.

I wouldn't go back to using a "good" bike as a commute bike if I could avoid it. About the only thing that would sway me would be a very long commute. But that'd just be a great excuse to add a recumbent to the bike collection

Tonyandthewhale

What's wrong with using your old bike as it is (after fixing or replacing the wheels of course)? I'd probably go with that. Or else convert it to singlespeed or possible a 1x7 set up.

For my current commuting and utilitarian riding (significantly less than 60km round trip) I'm using a rigid mountain bike with slicks, trecking bars and a 1x8 set up. If I had a significantly longer commute I'd probably using my winter/training bike which is a 9 speed set up with a compact chainset.

I like the 1x8 set up because I have the advantage of multiple gears but the simplicity of a single up front. 8 speed is also ideal because it means I get to use a nice modern freehub (unlike the older freewheel type you'd get with most 7 speed set-ups). However 8 speed also means I get to use a nice thick chain which is robust and longer lasting than a 9, 10 or 11 speed chain and cassette combo.

As Seamus pointed out, full length mudguards will severely cut down on the amount of maintenance you'd have to do, even if you don't go singlespeed.

Lumen

Does the frame have horizontal dropouts?

If not then going fixed will be difficult, and you'll not only miss the zen of spinning your legs impotently whilst going downhill but you'll need to run a chain tensioner.

Now I hate cleaning jockey wheels as much as the next lazy bastard, but is there really much difference between cleaning a single chain tensioner pulley and cleaning a pair of jockey wheels in a rear mech? I guess if there's no shifting to go wrong it means you don't have to keep it clean.

colm_gti

Thanks for all the input lads...I've convinced myself to do none of the above, or a variation on the second road bike idea, and start using my current 'good' bike (aluminium frame with shimano 105) for commuting next week, not to bother upgrading the aksiums on it before next season like I had planned to, and instead to upgrade the entire bike to a canyon aeroad cf 7.0 sl, planet x N2A sram force, or something of that nature in and around the 2.5k mark....

Cue a 'what bike for €2.5k' thread in a month or two's time :rolleyes:

kincsem

It would be possible on a single speed. My Felt singlespeed (39 front /16 rear with mudguards) was fine for Stillorgan to Ashford and back training spins (75 km round trip). The climb from Bray to Kilmacanogue on the M11, about a 60 metre ascent, was the only climb.
My time on the SS was only about 10 minutes slower than on a road bike (triple). The SS has drops, but I use the hoods 99% of the time.

Redmond101

Get your wheels and then your only a frame and a groupset away from a second bike

El Vino

I commute around 20km each way each day and tried a single speed for a while, it is relatively flat but runs almost perfectly East - West (return) wind was the problem some days especially this time of year you are riding into a gale and it wasn't fun.

lennymc

well done colm, you have moved one step closer to cycling nirvana by accepting that any time you have a cycling related query, the answer is you allways need a new bike.