Whatever Happened to The Teenage Dream....

Project road path is taking something of a back seat while I await the right wheelset and crucially, the right wheelset at the right price. In my experience when one project slows, another gathers momentum and in this instance, the teenage dream-my bespoke road bike from 1991 has been blasted ready for spraying by the good folk at Maldon Shot Blasting & Powder Coating. They’ve been so busy over the past weeks but Graham found five minutes on Friday morning to work his magic.Poor finish wasn’t exclusive to the paint-the seat-tube was poorly reamed, scratching nice and indifferent seatposts with equal malice. Supposedly reamed to 27.0 thus preserving the integrity of relatively thin tube walls, I had designs on taking it out to 27.2 but conversation with frame builder Justin (Burls) suggests this is inadvisable. That said, he’s generously offered to clean it up for me and install a new headset into the bargain. While preserving the bike’s character, some modernisation is planned starting with the cockpit. An Ahead adaptor will allow me to enjoy the benefits of stiffer bars and a really nice set of dual pivot Ti callipers will bring stopping bang up to date.
Reasoning that an ISIS type bottom bracket and crank would not only look out of place but means retiring a perfectly worthy Stronglight crank to the spares drawer, the princely sum of £10 changed hands buying another square taper ACOR fit and forget cartridge bearing model-basically a 113mm version of that sported by the Holdsworth. It might lack glamour but remains a marked improvement over the nigh on twenty-year old FAG design it replaces.
Noting the Hutchinson tyres were now ready for pensioning off, I acquired a nice set of folding 700X23 Kevlar belted rubber-the sort that should really blast along with nominal effort. Their super supple carcass should’ve literally slipped aboard the rims but they fought back with gusto, earning my thumb a huge, pulsing blister and snapping a very nice tyre lever in two! Running seven bikes and with a stint on the trade side of the counter under my belt, I’ve changed plenty in my time but the language they induced turned so blue as to shame the Holdsworth.

Next Week: Primed & Ready For Painting

A Break In The Chain?

Neither shy of, nor purposefully courting controversy rumour of the hipster crowd’s desertion of the fixed fraternity in favour of another fad pleases me. The Times newspaper suggests the beautiful people are headed in the direction of a new retro revival-1950’s French style delivery bikes. Bon! This hopefully means the fixed faithful can continue enjoying the one cog as part of a wider cycling diet without approval or direction from the self appointed gurus of chic.

This might spell an end to the fashion for stripping every braze-on clean from a frameset in the name of aesthetics. I’ll confess to a pleasant indifference to conversions having cut my teeth on one some twenty years back.

Conversions make great, low maintenance winter trainers while providing a new lease of life for older but otherwise worthy bikes. Fashion can be fun but all too often it’s at cost to practicality and many fixer framesets were track inspired with no provision for rack or fender mounts. Track bikes by definition are intended for the Velodrome and have some very distinct limitations for road duties- you only need to stand on the corner of a busy London street watching the messenger wannabes wind-milling about on ridiculously tall gears sans brakes.

Conversely, we owe the hipster a degree of gratitude; afterall, they’ve been influential in driving the boom and much improved supply of frame and components. Take hubs for example, not long ago choice was limited to Maillard double fixed for budget builds or Campagnolo or Dura Ace at the opposite end. By contrast there’s now a wealth of wallet friendly, weather sealed units just right for daily road duties and the same applies to cranks and sprockets, which, frankly is just what the doctor ordered.


Clothing has become more exciting and arguably more practical-especially round town. However, while supply and demand are reasonably well matched in these contexts, this fixed fetish has pushed the price of older steel frames through the roof. Admittedly many of the gallery bikes are found unwanted and unloved, rotting in a neighbours yard, by the roadside or indeed in skips/dumpsters. I was very, very fortunate to have been gifted the Holdsworth given its relative rarity and the asking prices for very tatty examples.

Such trends are by no means exclusive to cycling and I draw parallels with the cyclical popularity of Lambretta scooters and old type one and two VW cars. Time was when basically well kempt 1500 Beetles could be had for £1,200. Now, thanks largely to the hipster/pseudo surfer crowd you’d be luck to find a wreck for £1800.

Long lived fixed as a popular, enjoyable and relatively inexpensive niche. Good riddance to messenger wannabes and anyone else for whom fashion is their only culture