> If I may reiterate the theme you expressed concerning brake levers,
>to me the question of change + modification is simply a matter of
>personal choice, it's not a question of right and wrong. So while I
>will never deign to tell you what bicycle you would be better off
>with, this "tinkerer" asks the same in return.
Absolutely - there are many approaches that are valid. I just tried to point out that the whole idea of a constructeur bicycle is to get things right from the onset, and not change them afterward. You can't even change the tire size easily on a constructeur bike. The bike is designed as a unit, and changing one component isn't part of the idea. By designing the bike as a unit, you can fine-tune it so that it'll work wonderfully, but if you change a component, the whole bike may go out of tune. (For example, running a 20 mm tire on a bike optimized for 30 mm tires will yield some interesting results. I have tried it...)
This contrasts with the approach more common in Britain, where you'd use the same bike with fenders and heavy wheels in the winter for commuting, then ride it with "sprints" (we call them tubulars) and no fenders in a time trial, and perhaps even on the track. In fact, Hetchins made a bike that had multi-position dropouts (both rear-opening track and forward-opening road)... A tinkerer's dream, and many of those bikes are truly wonderful.
The French cyclotourists also used the same bike for commuting, time trials and Paris-Brest-Paris, but they didn't change a thing (except hand-made tires that they used only for special events). Instead, they made rules that required fenders, lights and racks for their time trials.
In car racing, you find that among amateurs in the U.S., I am told, who use street-legal cars for racing, perhaps with different tires, but still equipped with lights, fenders, etc. Then they switch wheels and drive it home and to the office the next day.
So again, I did not mean to show disrespect for your approach to cycling, I just wanted to point out that the Singer with the immovable front derailleur was not intended for that approach.
Just as a by the way, you still can change the front chainring size by 2-4 teeth without problems, because the diameter of those rings doesn't vary that much. (4 teeth out of 50 is only 8%.) Considering that most Singers were originally set up for 50-tooth or 48-tooth chainrings, it appears unlikely that you'd need to change them by much more than that.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
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