cormacf

I just moved to San Diego, and we have a relaxed, low-stress, local tracklocross series here. Seems very much a "rung what you brung," but my wife is OK with me building another bike for it, so I might as well brung something neat!

So far, I've been looking at 70s/80s road and MTB frames with horizontal(ish) dropouts. Lots of cool stuff there, some lugs, and some of the paintjobs are epic if they aren't shredded (huge fan of Peugeot paint jobs, with bonus points if they have non-French threading.

I was wondering, though--has anyone taken a legit track frame (something NJSish) and slapped on some 650b track wheels to get clearance for CX tires? That would LOOK super cool (and also give me a real track bike with a wheel swap), but I have no idea what a geo like that would do on even a gentle cross course. I mean, they weren't really designed for hills, or even turning, though plenty of hipster fixie folks ride them in streets.

Then again, I've never seen a real track bike in SSCX, and people ride all sorts of stuff, so there must be a reason?

Russ Roth

I've got the motobecane sscx bike, I've rebuilt the wheels with lighter carbon rims and butted spokes which has gotten it down to a chunky 26lbs, it isn't light by any means although it rides wonderfully and was affordable. I suspect you're not seeing track frames because they really won't come close to handling anything resembling a cross tire. Looking at my Felt TK2, a common track frame around here, any my daughter's Javelin, even shrinking down to 650b the space between the stays would be tight. They both start with only 120mm rear spacing and then slightly curve the stays inwards. Both have very tight clearance to the frame, and both struggle to run a 25c tire on a 19mm internal width rim, they really are designed for 23c tires. The motobecane has the "nice feature" of 120mm rear spacing so it'll easily accommodate a fixie wheel and run tracklocross, it also means that the selection of 120mm disc hubs sucks big time. There are other single speed cross frames but they're typically 135mm spacing so no fixie hub will fit well. Going with an 80s, horizontal dropout frameset is probably the easiest was to go.

tsacco27

I spent a week in New York City in 2018 and couldn’t afford to take a cab every day to my destination in Queens. I found an ad on Craigslist from a defunct bike messenger company selling off all their bikes for $20 each. When I got there they had about 30 bikes left. You could only buy whichever one was on the front of the stack, which I did.

They were all single speed Fortified Invincible bikes, which I had never heard of. An ‘urban’ bike with a heavy, stout aluminum frame, ovalized top tube, huge ovalized down tube, gigantic aluminum fork, and track dropouts.

After thoroughly enjoying my week thrashing around the big city, I took it home to Tampa FL and had my LBS convert it to my idea Of tracklocross: a fixed Mavic CXP / generic (Normandy?) high flange hub fixed wheelset from Velo Mine, generic drop bar, carbon fiber Cannondale seat post and TRP front brake lever, Race Face Chester pedals, Challenge Grifo 32 tires. We did keep the front brake but ditched the rear, along with the un-branded crank and bash guard.

I haven’t ever seen a tracklocross event in person but I imagine this bike is somewhat appropriate. There is plenty of clearance for even bigger tires. I only ride it on a sandy single track trail in the woods near my house and I love it.