Whisperer's single speed journey

With all this talk of Single Speeding, I thought I'd share my experience as a 'recent' convert.
I built up a bitsa for commuting, based on an MTB hardtail frame, some tired Crossmax wheels, hayes disks and odd bits I had around the shed. I got a rigid zion fork, for about $70 and that does fine for the road. No need for a lockout!

The plan was to have a low maintenance bike for my commuting - I do about 30km a day with some serious hills: roseville bridge both ways, parrawi, spit hill (the back way) on the way home, and the climb up to north sydney from neutral bay by the water. I started off with 36x16 gearing, and got some *really good* spinning practice on the flats and down hills, and the climbs were all ok.

But when I did longer rides or wanted to get to work in hurry it was just too low. My top average speed (with those hills and stopping for the lights) was around 28kmh. I got some good leg workouts all the same, and built up my lower back muscles a bit. I used an old race face crank with the chainring on the inside and it worked ok.
However with the added effort, I wanted a narrower Q factor, (the width of the pedals) for better stability under load.

So, I had a 'vintage' Campag record crank, and used the 'small' ring with a new ratio of 42x16.
The chainstays of the mtb frame were too wide for the original square taper bottom bracket, so I fitted a shimano triple bb (it's handy having an archealogical dig of bike bits!), a bit wider and with the chainring on the outside it has much the same chainline as the race face crank, but 20mm narrower Q factor.

This is working really well. The hardest hill is Roseville going west, cos you can't really wind up too much going over the bridge (it is a gentle rise to the base of the hill), but heck I wanted to get stronger, and it's working

My average speed for the commute is up (30.1km/h last week), and I'm generally keeping my cadence below 120 on the flats and downhills, but still averaging in the 88-92 zone most rides. It's now more fun to ride with this gearing, just have to get out of the saddle a bit more.

Getting the bars 'right' has been a bit of a mission too. I originally had a set of low risers on, but the upsweep wasn't so good for me, so I've gone to flat bars with some pretty long bar ends, and set up with a fairly long reach.

I highly recommend disc brakes, having ridden on the road for 23 years with rim brakes, it's really nice to be able to haul it up fast when needed. I'm 78Kg, so I use a 180mm disc on the front, and that really helps too.

I used a surly singleator to tension the chain. I really need an extra tooth or a half link chain to take out the slack but don't have either handy. I also tried having the singleator tensioning 'down' but with the reduced wrap on the back cog I got some slipping.