Bike Swaps - Part 1.

Been a while since I blogged but few swaps have been going on in the meantime. I fancied building one of those fixed gear racing bikes, but needed a frame and cheap. So started trawling gumtree, I found an advert for a raleigh frame including saddle, crank and headset/stem.
The frame was a bit rusty but showed promise.

The owner wanted to swap it for a 26" Mountain bike wheel to repair his own fixed gear mountain bike. Sadly I didn't have a wheel but contacted the seller and set about trying to acquire one.

I went down to the lawrence street workshops in the middle of the holylands as it has the "belfast bicycle workshop" in it, hoping to track down a wheel. Sadly its owner, Austin was away but I bumped into Paddy Bloomer.

Paddy builds everything from a peddle powered soundsystem to making a boat from a skip and then sailing it round the canals of venice. He's a great bunch of lads.

Paddy took me round to his workshop that has every kind of bike including sinclair C5 and after a bit of rummaging hoked out a 26" mountain bike wheel.

He didnt want anything for it and told me to get him a pint sometime, but as no good deed goes unpunished after a bit of haggling he settled on 4 tins of guinness as a swap for the bike wheel :).

Later that night I met Harry the owner of the frame and swapped him the wheel for the frame, after stripping of all the stuff I didnt need for the conversion I was left with this...

still turning 4 tins of Guinness into a bike isnt a bad days work.