Ex Ben Swift track bike

[sparkybhp]

Road bikes are not my usual thing but I thought I’d share this here:

This was given to me by a good friend of mine who has given up track cycling and needed to clear space at home.
I don’t know too much about it other than it was originally a track/training bike for Ben Swift. His nickname ‘Swifty’ has been custom painted onto the frame and I’d imagine the penguin on the headtube was done for him too. Looks like he signed it at the top of the down tube before passing it on.
It’s currently set up fixed with no brakes on Kenda grass track tyres and weighs 6.9kg without pedals which is crazy to me.
The question is - what to do with it! It does fit me at 52/55cm so that’s a bonus.. Maybe fit a front brake & flat bars and blast around on it now and again?
If anyone has any thoughts or info feel free to comment. I guess if anyone had a home for it I’d be ok to move it on - maybe a swap for an mtb I’d be more likely to use??
Anyway, it’s an interesting bike so I’d thought I’d share it here.
Thanks.

 

[rikster]

Frame builder is Kevin Winter from the north east. The penguin logo is something of a trademark of his I've seen on a lot of his frames. Not sure if he's still building frames these days but seems to have a good reputation.

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Road bikes are not my usual thing but I thought I’d share this here:
View attachment 971957View attachment 971958View attachment 971959
This was given to me by a good friend of mine who has given up track cycling and needed to clear space at home.
I don’t know too much about it other than it was originally a track/training bike for Ben Swift. His nickname ‘Swifty’ has been custom painted onto the frame and I’d imagine the penguin on the headtube was done for him too. Looks like he signed it at the top of the down tube before passing it on.
It’s currently set up fixed with no brakes on Kenda grass track tyres and weighs 6.9kg without pedals which is crazy to me.
The question is - what to do with it! It does fit me at 52/55cm so that’s a bonus.. Maybe fit a front brake & flat bars and blast around on it now and again?
If anyone has any thoughts or info feel free to comment. I guess if anyone had a home for it I’d be ok to move it on - maybe a swap for an mtb I’d be more likely to use??
Anyway, it’s an interesting bike so I’d thought I’d share it here.
Thanks.

Ride it, the speed will forever taint you and you will never be the same again

 

[Foreigner]

That's his Junior years bike, so would be 15 or 16 riding it. He is 1.80m tall otherwise these days. Stick a front brake on and ride the hell out of it. But please change that stem to something less pointing up

 

[sparkybhp]

Thanks for all the info and encouragement above, I have had a tinker with this and raided my spares stash to get it to here:

The drop bars/stem and the carbon/white seatpost have been swapped out to this flat bar setup. I had forgotten that I had the Cinelli Groove stem but I think it works on this, especially with the black face plate. Works well with the super narrow BLB bars in black. The seatpost needed to be black too and this FSA one has done the trick.
I fitted a Campagnolo front calliper and Salsa lever, wasn’t too keen on using this on the road without a front brake!

I reckon that’ll do it, at least now I’m more likely to ride it - definitely wouldn’t have used it as it was.