I bought this Bridgestone 450 from an eBay auction for about $50, which at the time seemed like an absolute steal, but when it arrived I realized it was definitely 50 dollars worth of bike. It had good bones though, with a triple-butted cromoly steel frame and a red and yellow paint scheme that’s a bit chipped but still looks great in my opinion.

I fully disassembled the bike and regreased the bottom bracket, head set, and fork. The original stem and handlebar had some damage from shipping/being a nearly 50 year old bike, but I managed to find the same orginal “SR Custom” drops and stem for less than $15, also on eBay.

Next I wanted to upgrade my wheels and freewheel. I was using friction shifters, so in theory with properly adjusted limit screws, I could use a modern set of gears, without needing to upgrade my derailleur and shift lever. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just change the freewheel/cassette because the bike had an ancient French Helicomatic freewheel, which had proprietary splines that do not work with other freewheels. Buying new rims, spokes and hubs was too expensive and wheel building was really intimidating, so I ended up using the old ones, just trued slightly.

Finally, after finishing a few smaller things, a few months after buying it, I had a road bike that I had built. It wasn’t perfect and needed a new saddle and seat post, but it was perfectly usable.

Eventually, I convinced myself that I wanted to try a fixed-gear bike. I still didn’t want to build a wheel myself so I bought a complete rear wheel with nicer rims and a fixed hub from Velomine’s (small bike shop in Springfield, IL) online store. They helped because since my bike is an older road frame, the rear spacing is different than most fixed gear bikes and requires special spacers.

With the right hub and spacers, converting to fixed gear was really straightforward. I removed the derailleurs and shift cables, put the wheel on and adjusted the front chain ring to get a decent chain line.

As always, there’s still more that I want to do with this bike, like a rear brake delete, new saddle, and seatpost, but this bike is a blast in the state it is currently in. I try to go on longer rides with my friends every once in a while and I try to bike places as much as I can with this.