29er Fixie?

It turns out that 29er wheel sizes can run 700c tires. I recently came upon a 29er INO frame, and have been playing with it as a fixie with the 27-1/2 wheels off my OTHER fixie. I got a set of 29" wheels and want to set up that bike proper! The rear wheel is a take-off from a Red Line monocog 29er.

It's a single speed hub - no chance to run gears on it. The good news is that it has a mount for a disc brake, and one new-ish technology is rotor mounted cogs. After doing some research, this blog showed me that I can use an existing single speed cog for this!

Here's a single speed cog, marked from a disc brake rotor, on the drill press:

Using a multi-purpose bit

The only thing that this drill bit was make smoke and turn purple. It is a well used bit better suited for drilling holes in wood, drywall, Styrofoam, soap bubbles, water, air, etc. 

Foiled again!

Time to get a bit hard enough to drill this material, so off to the hardware store I go...

Hardened steel drill bit challenge

 wish I had more to report on this contest, but the ARTU bit was working so well I didn't swap them out. 

Success!

 There's a bit of a lip on the hub, so I filed down some washers and used them to take up the space. The more hack-y this thing is, the better.

Washers in Place

All bolted up

After the washers were filed to fit the hub, the cog went on pretty well. The holes weren't perfectly lined up, but they were so close you couldn't tell. Once concern was that the set of holes would be off center from the axle, and I'd have a tight spot in the chain, but that wasn't an issue. 

All put together

I took it for a spin this morning, and it works well! it's a long comfortable frame, The only complaint I would register is that the crank arms are 175's so they tend to clip the ground if I turn too tightly. The fork and brake are another fun project, stay tunes for that update!