Charlie says.... I ride one of these and flat out love it. Excellent frame, full of character. Yeah an alloy fixie from one of the big manufacturers looks great on paper, and this can look a bit simple... but its all in the ride. Trust me on this one: all the fixie you will ever need with a sublime ride. AND THESE WERE £730... bit a of a bargain now.
Surly say... We offer the Steamroller as a frameset and also as a complete bike. The frame, like all our frames, is made of 4130 CroMoly steel. Steel is springy and durable, providing a ride feel you don’t get from aluminum or carbon fiber, at a price titanium can’t match. True, our frames are not the lightest out there, but then they’re not supposed to be. Instead, they’re a balance of excellent ride quality and durability.
It was designed as a dedicated fixed-gear, but its geometry is closer to a road bike than a track bike. It’ll take tires up to about 38mm. Its got nothing in the way of braze-ons except a set of water bottle cage mounts. You could add front and rear brakes and a freewheel if you really want, but you’ll need to use full length rear housing.
This year we changed the component spec of the complete bike. We gave the Steamroller big shoes, a wide upright-ish bar, brakes, and we chose a gear ratio more suitable to paths as well as roads. It sports Surly hubs (the rear is outfitted with our fixed cog and lockring, and is threaded on the other side for a singlespeed freewheel should you want to run one) and our new Open Bar handlebar, in addition to a selection of components designed to work well and love you long time without punching you in the wallet.
As you’ve probably noticed, there are a whole bunch of fixed-gears out there nowadays, most of them either actual track bikes (not especially suited to streets and definitely not suited to paths) or modified fixed-gears that people ride like BMX bikes. We made ours more like an all terrain fixed-gear, an updated version of bikes from the old daze, long ago, when all bikes were fixed-gears, when people raced on flat oval dirt tracks, and when bad roads were the norm. The Steamroller is right at home in these conditions. What won’t it do? Bar spins.
