The Motobecane has officially been converted to single speed. It's also got a new set to Kenda small block 8's. Test ride around the neighborhood scheduled for the afternoon. I can already tell you that I am entirely unhappy with the tensioner I put on. Well maybe it's not the tensioner's fault but, it's use with my particular model of bike. The whole reason I bought it was because it was one of the only ones I found that was a "push up" style. However, with the particular gearing and length of my chain stays, I was only able to use it in "push down" mode. I am hoping I can it positioned the way I want if I put some 1/2 links or something in the chain later. I would have just threw on a smaller cog but, I want to stick with 2 to 1 gearing out of the gate.
What a freaking ordeal the conversion and new tires turned out to be. I had to make an emergency run to Jim's to get a presta adapter to use my compressor to inflate my tires and get the beads to set. I spent at least an hour pouting over the fact I couldn't use the tensioner the way I wanted and I was barely strong enough to get the tires on. They are tighter fit than my Pythons. Which are actually tubeless tires. To top it off, I discovered that my rear derailleur way so loose, it was ready to fall off my bike (that would have been sweet at Iceman) and I need about 1/2 of my spokes replaced in my rear wheel. The 2 or 3 times my chain sucked in between my cassette and spokes last year pretty much sawed them in 1/2.
Hopefully a spin outside will stop all of this whining and complaining. But, first to clean up the mess I made of the basement.
***UPDATE***
Went for spin. Bike road fantastic. The drive train is totally silent. Before I left, I decided that I would try and figure out why my handle bars were creaking the last few times I rode my bike last year. The bottom two bolts on the face of the stem were finger tight. I am not sure how the bars weren't spinning in the stem. I am shocked they held up at Iceman.
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