I spent part of saturday working on the Harry Hall Elan. Whilst a fairly solid commuter over the last few years, I have toyed with the idea of singlespeeding the frame ever since I had it restored. This has been due to the fact that it was built with Campagnolo horizontal drop outs which have the advantage of plenty of adjustment to run such a setup without the need for any chain tensioner, keeping things clean and neat. So off with all the gears and on with a Gusset Singlespeed kit (thanks to Kelvin and Cy).
The drop bars and stem came off (due to relocate to a new home shortly) and were replaced with a 130mm Thomson and a pair of Azonic double wall flat bars chopped down to 20.5″ and fitted out with some Deore levers and a pair of lock-on grips that were floating around in the spares box. The flat bar, singlespeed result is something that looks a lot more interesting than it did. Based on the absence of any gear changes on my Mancunian commute I’m confident that its 50:16 setup will be do-able, but we’ll have to wait until Monday to find out.
Rode with Tyrrell for the first time this year today. Armed with Singlespeeds we rode out to test his legs. Not knowing how far would be too far we kept it a fairly open route and in the end after crossing the Goyt and the dirt jumps, decided to head for home. Essentially this was a repeat of route 28, but a plan has been hatched to do a ride to Edale from home which I haven’t done in a couple of years, so I think that’s next.
R O T H A R . C O M 
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