You can easily drop about a pound on the bike: the stock Kenda tires are almost 90gm per tire heavier than comparably sized kevlar belted Primo Comet tires (the Kendas are non-kevlar), and the oversized 1.50-1.75 tubes are ~40gm heavier than properly sized 1.25-1.50 tubes. That’s already 1/2 pound. Depending on your replacement saddle, you can also drop another ~200gm there. Dump the chainring guard and longer chainring bolts for shorter single-stack bolts (the bolts are steel and thus a good cheap opportunity to drop some additional grams).

Nice looking bike!

Oh yeah, a couple things I forgot to add: you can take crescent wrench to the those rear brake boss posts, and if you want to ditch the chainring guard, get yourself a set of single-stack BMX chainring bolts.

Very nice work! Aside from the saddle, all that’s left for you to do is to throw-on some light and fast tires (the stock Kendas are pretty heavy).

Here, have a look at my Swift fixie: http://velospace.org/node/1235

I went with a Velocity aero rim laced to a 32H 130mm Surly road flip-flop hub (47mm chainline), ripped-out the stock 68×116 bottom bracket and replaced it with a Shimano 68×107 UN-53 bottom bracket (with the 50T chainring mounted on the outside of the crank spider yields a 48mmm chainline).

The QR levers are seatpost binders, which I’m replacing with hex bolt binders – I’m not welding the damn thing open. All I have to do if I want to fold the bike is whip out my allen key (and yes, I am the kind of guy that carries a set of allen keys), loosen the two bolts, fold the bike, tighten the bolts, and I’m set. The bolts will not interfere with the bikes folding ability, they just add a minute or two to the process.

A lot of people have the wrong idea about folding bicycles, thinking that buying one means not having to lock it up, since you can just bring it wherever you’re going. Not true, at least not with most folding bikes available. They get smaller than a regular bike, but not so small that you can toss them in your backpack.

If he doesn’t use bolts then someone could steal the QR’s and his seat as well as his handle bars. If he needs to use the folding ability, then he can always put the QR’s back on.

But those are great comparison shots. Thanks for posting them.

It also looks like I could maybe use a longer stem, but this is fine for now. My priority is getting rid of that saddle. Am I really that much taller than you? I’m 5’9″.

Can you post a pic of you on it just while your other bike is behind it. I’m just curious to see how the geometry is.

Thanks