Here's my bike that I think I finished building in early 2025. It started as a fixed gear bike.

I fell in love with fixed gear in 2014. Back then I bought myself a Fuji Declaration and modified it a bit. A year later, I built my first fixed gear bike from scratch, using a classic Soviet-era steel track frame. The next fully custom build occurred only 4 years later. And that time I used Tsunami SNM-100. A really cheap and reliable frame. I rode it till 2023, when I decided to build a new bike. Now the frame of choice was Surly Steamroller. I guess the reason for this building habit was half boredom, half curiosity. Anyway, the build was done. My urge was satisfied.

But then I stumbled upon this video. The timestamp is 33:36.

And I was amazed by the minimal setup. I instantly wanted to update my build the same way. I looked for similar e-hubs and found that the one I needed and that was accessible was Zehus. But they didn't sell it as is, and the only way to obtain it was via buying a complete bike or an assembled wheel. Both options were expensive, around 1.5K euros. But I was lucky to find a weird second-hand bike, featuring the wheel with that e-hub for only 800 euros. It felt a bit sketchy to buy it, but it was too good to miss. And fortunately the seller was a really nice guy, he shipped it with some additional stuff. Which I used to rebuild that bike to sell it later, because I only needed the wheel. The front hub with drum brakes was an easy find. And I had to buy a pair of rims and lace it all together.

And I'm quite happy with the result. The motor is nothing special, but it definitely helps on steep hills. The minimal look, the e-hub and the low-maintenance result in an amazing riding and owning experience.