Back From The Dead – Building Bargain Dirt Jump Bikes

Dieter is the kind of bike nerd mechanic that every good bike shop should want. He is endlessly enthusiastic about getting people of all kinds onto bikes of all sorts. He can fix your bike even when the outlook looks bleak. Go for a ride with him and you’ll probably end up doing high fives and exclaiming ‘sick!’. In short, he has boundless enthusiasm for all things bike. He’s also a bit of a socially conscious punk environmentalist, so he’s probably a bit rubbish if your bike shop is one of those glittering concept store type places where it doesn’t smell of rubber and GT85 (Or WD40). Luckily for him, and us, he works at our local social enterprise bike shop, and we’ve talked him into bringing us a few of his more ingenious and interesting fixes, alongside whatever commentary he might like to get off his chest. We hope you enjoy…

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By down_and_across

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Back From The Dead – Building Bargain Dirt Jump Bikes

Love this! We just picked up a Giant STP for £cheap and we’re going to nail it together into something we can hurt ourselves on 🤣

Brilliant. These are quickly becoming my favourite articles on the front page. This one makes me want to go and smash up my hardtail and myself on some jumps. 😁

Mr dead, could you please do a how to on the mech to singlespeed tensioner conversion. Want to know how you mod the cage! Cheers!

@tomsir

No problem, ideally an old road mech works best as they have higher spring tension and a smaller, neater body. Because you want it to look smart as well as work well!

I then chopped the lower jockey wheel off with my Dremel, (you could use a junior hacksaw if you don’t have access to a Dremel.

Then its just a matter of inserting an old cable into the derailleur with the nipple sat in the cable tension adjuster.

Pull the derailleur vaguely into line with the rear sprocket and fine tune the chainline with the cable tension adjuster.

All done!

I’ve used this type of tensioner for years in the past and it works wayyy better than any of the proper dedicated chain tensioners do!

Cheers for that dude. So it really is just chop the bottom half of the cage as short as possible and nothing else? I always thought there would be more modding! Good to know there’s not.

@tomsir

Yeah man, slice and dice! Unless you’re running it on a full sus then leave the whole cage intact so you have some room for chain growth! Probably should have put that in the article!

Where is that Like Button?

Brill stuff man. The noble set of bodging singlespeeds. My first tensioner was called a “spatulator” as the chain guide cage was part kitchen spatula. Little did I know that first single speed was the starting point for a Bikemonger, my career for many years, organising the SS champs, and ten thousand beers.

Great article. Really hits home – my 13 year old can’t get enough of digging and jumping, which is keeping me busy with bike repairs (he’s looking for a jump bike). Time to resurrect one of my old frames!

This story warmed my cockles more than any ‘Here’s the latest greatest that’ll cost you an arm and a leg’ story on here ever did. All we need now here in Calderdale is that pump track…

Brilliant stuff – great to see kids being supported like this (as well as your other customers)!

Phenomenal article. Phenomenal kindness of Dieter.

Reminds me of when I was a kid and my big brother used fix my bikes as well as build up ‘parts specials’
My pals used to bring their bikes around as well for him to fix. Halcyon days indeed.

Any chance of regular update articles? Would love to see more of your creations as well as hearing from how the kids are progressing.

Thanks again for your efforts.

@didnthurt check the front page today! Dieter is a regular fixture!

Dieter’s members forum page is probably the easiest place to find all his articles linked.

https://singletrackworld.com/user/down_and_across/?profiletab=forums