If one were to argue that the best bike projects are the most out there, then professional bike mechanic Paul Legendre’s Cannondale SuperSix fixie might be the perfect example.
Legendre lives in Aubervilliers, near Paris, and bought the SuperSix frameset from Leboncoin, a French online marketplace. The frameset was listed as crashed, and he picked it up for €70.
“The rear derailleur hanger was ripped off and part of the frame with it,” Legendre tells BikeRadar.
Legendre already had a Cannondale CAAD10 fixie – and he’s been riding fixed-gear bikes for a long time.
“I started getting really interested in bicycles when I was at university. I started customising my bikes around the same time. Mostly road bikes, but it was kind of the end of the fixed-gear era and I got hooked on that too,” he says.
When Legendre picked up the SuperSix frameset, he says he already had this project in mind. “I was imagining something like a Cannondale Dolan Seta evolution of it. A ‘good-for-nothing’ road-geometry lightweight fixed-gear bike,” he explains.
Legendre enlisted the help of the bicycle manufacturer Cyfac to convert the SuperSix from a road bike to a fixie.
“I've dealt with them before and I have some contacts there. So I knew they were capable of making this modification,” he says.
“I just told them what I wanted and they did it. They cut off the original dropouts and replaced them with track dropouts, while also trying to raise the bottom bracket height a bit. They also removed the derailleur cable guides and the front derailleur hanger. And finally, a small touch-up of paint on the chainstays and seatstays.”
Legendre says the modification cost him €400, and he built the rest of the bike himself, taking almost everything from his CAAD10.
The most complicated part of the build was fitting a rear brake. Legendre had asked Cyfac to increase the bottom bracket height of the bike, which included moving the rear wheel further from the bridge, and meant Legendre had to get creative with his brake caliper.
“I had to modify my SRAM Red rear caliper to make it a long-reach caliper,” he says. “I also shortened the caliper axle to gain a few precious millimetres.
“The rest is SRAM carbon levers, a SRAM Red crankset with a Raketa spider and a Sugino Zen chainring, and an Izumi Super Toughness chain.”
Legendre says the bike has the same purpose as his CAAD10: to be a bike for daily rides, but also capable of longer trips. He says he wants to cycle from Paris to his grandparents' house in Brittany, riding a fixie: “This is the perfect bike for that.”
As well as being a professional mechanic, Legendre also works as a part-time wheelbuilder, so he has plenty of wheelsets to choose from.
“As shown in the photos, the bike weighs 7.15kg with aluminum wheels and 6.7kg with carbon wheels,” he says.
This isn’t particularly light, especially next to some of the singlespeed builds we saw recently at the UK National Hill Climb Championship, including a super-light aluminium Cannondale Capo.
Legendre said he’s going to have to resist the urge to reduce his SuperSix fixie’s weight. “I don't really need a super lightweight fixed-gear road bike,” he says.
Some might say no one needs a fixed-gear road bike, whatever the weight. But builds like this are certainly the most imaginative and fun, however practical or impractical they prove to be.
