you know, i think it’s pretty stupid to assume that conversion = bad poseur bike. cause come on, you’re talking about poseurs. i know some pretty rad folks who ride pretty rad conversions - they really make very sensible all-arounders. and i know some people who pour a lot of money into stupid tarck frames that don’t fit them well.
ugh, what am i trying to say, i’m so inarticulate at this hour. look at this piece of shit. what a piece of shit conversion. what the hell is the “paris breasts paris” anyway???
The kirk is in the grey area. It serves the same function as a conversion, yet it is cleaner without the cable stops. I suppose it should be a “fixed gear road bike”. Which would pretty much be a “single speed road bike” without the possibility of adding a rear brake.
There are some amazingly nice conversions out there and I think a lot of it comes down to brakes. If you want the purity and clean look of no brakes, save up a little more and get a track frame. If you ride brakeless, but you say road geometry is more comfortable for the street, you’re full of shit because (a) you aren’t riding far enough for geometry to make much of a difference or (b) if you are riding long distances, the lack of a brake is putting much more of an acute strain on your body than the geometry is.
I’ve got a Fuji Touring Series IV. Brakeless, it’s jackass. With cantis and drops, it’s a sweet looking fixed tourer/townie.
Here’s a tiny SS conversion I built over the last few days for my friend Laura. It’s the first bike I’ve ever built that I physically can not ride. I wish i could.
Could have made it tarckier, but I couldn’t find 26" blue deep v’s.
i think it would make more sense to call this the “i hate fucking stupid bikes.” we could all agree on that. there are great “conversions” out there. in the same sense of the word “conversion” -a bike being used for other than its use intended by design- then even the most amazing track bike being ridden on the street fits the bill…damnit, shut down this whole forum, were doomed.
I’m probably gonna catch some flack for this, but here goes anyway. At least some conversions have character and soul unlike 90% of those generic Pista/Iro/Kilo/BareKnuckle/Pake things I see around or on velospace. Putting spoke cards or tube pads on doesn’t make a cool bike. The whole point of this bike thing for me is to have a bike/bikes that suit you as an individual and what your needs and taste are, not to look exactly like all your buddies. I have a single speed conversion and a cross bike that cover all I need and no track bike. Even though I think the super clean lines of track bikes are sweet and pure, owning one for street riding has become so much a trend it’s as bad as wearing a white belt!!! Of course there are exceptions to everything in life and this is just my opinion and we all know about opinions and there similarity to aholes, so who really gives a fk anyways.
The Kirk is in the area of, “it doesn’t matter what directions your forks ends face so long as your bike is built for its purpose.” that was built as a fixed gear rando bike (about the dropouts, the owner said, “every try removing a rear wheel from track ends with full fenders?”). i’ve seen many a fine conversion - wonderful all-purpose city bikes. i’ve also known a lot of once zomg pure track bike riders start to realize that it would be awesome to have a bike that could fit bigger tires, knobby tires, fenders, ss/dual brakes…
i also recently saw, on velospace, an ugly nycbikes with a HED3. way to spend over half the value of your whole bike on your trendy and fragile front wheel, pal.
Have been reading it since it started and it seems at this point to be about a 50/50 split on the whole hate/love conversions and yes I know some of the other posts have voiced similar opinions but what the hell, I thought I’d way in anyways. Like I said there are exceptions both ways, stupid looking conversions and great ones, just as there are stupid looking ‘real’ track bikes and great looking ones also. Just goes to prove nothing but ‘folks is folks’ and shit this is just an internet chat board anyways so it’s all just a harmless way of killing time. Ok sorry for the fucking self censoring, got used to it thru some other boards doing it for you, won’t happen again.
I don’t mean gray area like “is it cool or jackass”, I mean it like “is it technically a conversion”. The Kirk is obviously cool as is the trackie above. But I do question the omission of the rear brake on a bike that was designed for long distance riding. I’ve done 200k+ rides fixed with only a front brake and by then end I was really wishing for the extra power of a rear. Not to mention that an audax bike generally has redundant systems (lights specifically). What happens when you’re 250k in, facing a long descent, and your pads are cooking your front rim?
I have tried to mount a wheel in track ends with fenders. Not super fast, but not too hard if you have the right hardware on the fenders. But horiz. drops are much easier.
And I agree that being a conversion doesn’t make a bike jackass, but it is much more likely and requires less effort than making a tarck bike jackass.
