I had, for a very long time, wanted to add a Quickbeam to my collection but just barely missed the last batch of silver beams. I eventually scored a nice deal on a Simpleone, which is a fantastic ride. I quickly began to wish I could get some gears on it, and went about scheming the best way to do it. I understand that adding gears to these Riv single-speeders is often viewed quite negatively around here, and so I'll apologize up front for all those I may offend. My goal with this build was to have a do-it-all ride that I could easily change up, and that I would not be paranoid about taking places, locking up wherever, etc. as I am with some other bikes.
I tooled around with the idea of a bolt on derailleur hanger for a while but eventually decided to go all the way and braze one on. For shifting, I added a single water bottle mount brazed on to the underside of the down tube onto which I bolt a cable stop if I am running bar end shifters or a paul thumbie. I also added a tiny triangular "shelf" just beneath the upper drive side rack mount which allows me to bolt on a down tube shifter to the seat stay. I mostly do this when I am running flat/city bars that don't have much room to allow for a shifter on the bars. I machined some little cable stops to bolt on so that the cable routing is clean when running gears and virtually disappears when running a single/double cog set up. I wanted to be able to simply swap rear wheels to go between single and geared set ups and so it was important to me to avoid spreading the rear triangle. I had a set of Velocity Dyads laced to Shimano Deore DX hubs sitting around from a previous build which were spaced for 135. In order to get this rear hub spacing down I purchased a Shimano DX BMX rear hub which are 120 spaced and transferred the narrow cassette body to the Deore. Theres a ton of these hubs laced to BMX wheels which you can get for cheap $$ from the ebay. The narrow BMX cassette body was perfectly compatible with the wider MTB hub and allowed me to fit a 6 speed cassette without spreading the rear triangle. I love the way this ride turned out and have been using it as my commuter and travel bike for over 2 years. I usually ride it set up with a bar end shifter on albatross bars most of the year and then switch to single speed in the winter. If I'm taking it somewhere I'll usually throw some Jitensha bars on it and relocate the shifter to the seat stay or keep it single speed, depending on the terrain. I had to strip the paint to get all the braze ons and so it was refinished in clear powder coat over a nice even bead blast. It's currently got some old Campy Nuovo Record bits that I moved from an old Serotta Club Special that I had to part ways with. The crankset has the outer teeth machined off to act as a chainguard. The fenders are VO Zeppelins that are powder coated to "match" the clear. Jitensha rear taillight mounted to the non-drive-side rack mount and an LED MagLite mounted to the Nitto Campee mini front rack. The LED Mag is an awesomely cheap front lighting option if you have a front rack and no dyno. The mag is 1" on the front and 3/4" on the back. I bought two appropriately sized P-clamps from Mcmaster-Car, stripped the rubber off the rear one and replaced it with bar tape. This way the front clamp holds the light, and the rear enables it to spin so you can simply twist the body of the light to turn it on/off. Also, if you are a shop nerd like me, the Klein Tools 5102-14SP is a perfect fit for the smaller Wald basket. <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Gch77qDWgxM/VtNEafXvHBI/AAAAAAAAAAk/oSN51kNUzoI/s1600/DSCF7126.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-v862Pbu0ruU/VtNE1DEX0bI/AAAAAAAAAA0/_7TA-jkgYuU/s1600/DSCF7130.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rkeSY5CsyZo/VtNE8b-l8DI/AAAAAAAAAA4/_TQbnH4pZFw/s1600/DSCF8190.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-j-fpsCvvIz4/VtNFDpCa3aI/AAAAAAAAAA8/dv2unVkh-j4/s1600/DSCF8195.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yKZlAx9ecUg/VtNFRxJ3CxI/AAAAAAAAABE/8KRiBeJ17JY/s1600/DSCF8201.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--mNWCEbbJRU/VtNFerqguyI/AAAAAAAAABI/hPzMwcj4jQI/s1600/DSCF8207.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qaVfndqASk8/VtNFjGioXhI/AAAAAAAAABM/Qj7GPIpxUXQ/s1600/DSCF8212.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-OcI9qPmIB_Q/VtNGDTdXQ_I/AAAAAAAAABU/DcFtpFbwsRw/s1600/DSCF8176.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-vQbpZHQmQNo/VtNGKgUR4rI/AAAAAAAAABc/opark2JUMoA/s1600/DSCF8183.JPG> <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-skoyYC5F6_U/VtNGUdv64cI/AAAAAAAAABg/DzmMYtVaqGc/s1600/DSCF8186.JPG> Always really enjoyed the RBWOB, it's been a great resource over the years. Thanks to all who contribute. Cheers, - S. Greco -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
