getting the frame

I got my frame from eBay. It seems you can consistantly find frames with horizontal dropouts. The only issue is getting one moderately cheap. If you find one that fits you for under $50 (including shipping) seriously seriously consider it. craigslist.com is another really good one if you can find a frame in your area. They're usually cheaper because there aren't looked at across the country and such. However, horizontal dropouts are really really important.

The key to a fixie is maintaining chain tension, otherwise the chain slips and you're surprised and maybe crash or break a chain or something. Horizontal rear dropouts allow you to adjust the tension by actually changing the position of the rear hub to tighten the chain. Granted you can work around this, or get the chain pretty close, but this is usually easier and less expensive than fancy weird hubs and luck.

I got mine for a bit more expensive than I'd like, but it was the right size, had beautiful dropouts and I was really excited about building a fixie. Here's a picture of it.


The guy who sent it to me did a ridiculously good job shipping it to me, he put spacers (a small poweraid bottle and some yellow thing) inbetween the rear dropouts and the fork blades to make sure they didn't get mashed in shipping, and then wrapped everything else in bubble wrap. It was really good and he got good feedback because of it.

Anyway, there was a snag. The frame came with a seat post, and I wanted to take it out in order to clean the frame. Since I got the frame last Saturday and the wheels I ordered (more on that later) probably won't get to me until later in the week that gives me most of the week to clean up the frame.

But the seatpost was stuck. As you might be able to see the seatpost wasn't a nice knobby one that you would be able to throw a saddle on for torque, it was basically just a steel tube, no real nice way to grip on a twist.

After squirting some WD-40 in there and grabbing on really hard and trying to pull the seatpost out, it didn't work out, my hand just hurt a lot. I knew that the seatpost wasn't rusted in because I could take my hammer and tap the seatpost down a little bit. After consulting Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintainance by Lennard Zinn and a call to my Dad I decided my next course of action.


1) Almost soak the seatpost in WD-40, both from the top and from the bottom, through where the bottom bracket should have been. I was lucky that when the frame came, the bottom bracket was left out. I put the WD-40 from from the top first, let it soak in a little, and then from the bottom bracket, propping the frame upside down like in the picture.

2) I left the frame outside so that the entire frame, the seatpost inparticular, would cool down. Then I drove to Target and got a $9 hairdryer and came back, probably about an hour.

3) Then I brought the frame inside and got my pair of pliers. Using the hair dryer I heated up just the seatpost tube. Now, heating up doesn't mean you have to get it hot, that'll take a while and isn't necessary. Remember that while you're heating up the seatpost tube the seatpost is heating up both from the hairdryer and just being inside.

4) Now take the pliers and grab onto the seatpost the best way you can. Since mine was hollow and round I took hold of it so that one prong of the pliers were inside the tube, and the other one was outside.

5) Twist and pull. If this doesn't work more extreme measures include taking the frame to a machine shop and having them mill it out or something, and Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintainance details more extreme measures to get the seatpost out.

Since I still have the better part of the week to clean up the frame, next: cleaning up and de-rusting the frame.