Road Bike crank set on single speed?
 

I am curious if you can fit a road bike crank set on a single speed bike. I have never really seen anyone try that, I wonder if a compact 50/34t Ultegra 6800 would work. What makes it intriguing to me is that high end road bike crank sets are cheaper than high end track crank sets.

Actually, many singlespeed cranksets such as the Sugino RD2 are just road double chainring cranks with one of the chairings removed and a different BB spindle length to get a good chainline.

Back in the day, it was de rigeur to use the inner chainring of the double when converting your road bike to fixed gear for winter training. :thumb:

Being a little more vain than that, but not wanting to invest in track-specific cranksets, my conversion has used double cranksets with a shorter bottom bracket in order to get good chainline with the outer ring position, as @TejanoTrackie suggested.

I wouldn't have guessed an Ultegra crankset costs a measly $160.

No reason you can't, really. It's probably going to be tough to find a variety of different sized chainrings, though, if that matters to you.

You'll have a lot more flexibility in finding chainrings if you go with a 5 arm spider.

Sure, why not. I had mine set up with a 105 crank and 50t ring.

Not really. TA Specialites makes 1/8" 130bcd chainrings ranging from 44t-52t.

130 BCD crank + eBay = unlimited inexpensive chainrings. 38T - ∞

Four bolt?

Missed that part. I was thinking 130bcd 5-bolt.

I guess some people are hell-bent on making things difficult.

^lol

I know we had a tough time finding a ring for a customer recently whose brother shipped his bike. Was a mess because everyone was out of the chainring we needed and it was for a 4 bolt jobber but the initial one we ordered didn't quite work.

I have a Shimano 600 crank and got it for $50. Ive seen dura ace square taper road cranks go as low as $70.