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Turning my Cannondale Hooligan bicycle more Hooligan-ish

20th March 2025, 19:30 by R Patil

Cannondale persisted and produced Hooligan for almost a decade finally killing it in 2019. By some reports, they produced around 25000 units of it. Most of those were sold in SE Asia, far East and Europe where market for quirky bikes like this is far bigger than in the Americas

BHPian amol4184 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Here is something you don't see often. Introduced in 2008-9 period, Hooligan wasn't popular because of the price but also because the mini-velo market is quite small compared to regular bicycles. Still, Cannondale persisted and produced Hooligan for almost a decade finally killing it in 2019. By some reports, they produced around 25000 units of it. Most of those were sold in SE Asia, far East and Europe where market for quirky bikes like this is far bigger than in the Americas.

Then, at the end of the production these bikes started gathering a small but cult like following and prices started rising. Now years old examples are going for more than they originally retailed. In the USA, these are rare and if one becomes available at reasonable cost, its gone immediately.

Some articles and posts on it piqued my interest and I decided to try it myself. After nearly a year's search I finally found one about 200 miles away from me in a different state on FB Marketplace. I didn't skip a beat and arranged to meet with the seller the next day (weekday, took a day off!) - I wasn't going to miss this one, no sir! I even transferred a token amount to seller which is something I NEVER do but I was going to risk everything this time. Fortunately that drive wasn't a waste. The seller was a legitimate guy and met me right on time. He knew the Hooligans were in high demand but he didn't think someone would travel from out of state

The first impressions were excellent. Not a single scratch or paint rub or dent. In fact the owner bought it back in 2016, rode around the cul-de-sac for a couple of times and then never took out of the garage again. The tires had injection nubs on them and the chainstays had plastic wrap on it from factory giving me no reason to doubt him.

The tires were flat but I didn't care. I didn't even check if the gear shift was working and handed him rest of the money with a wide grin on my face. This is how it looked on day 1.

Funky Lefty Solo Fatty fork. This is a heavy but interesting looking fork.

Stock configuration -

Cannondale made several configuration changes over the years. Some came with internal gear hub, some with regular derailleur based systems. Mine was bottom of the barrel config with 3 speed Shimano Nexus IGH and mechanical brakes rebranded as Cannondale. The tires were Kenda and heavy as rocks wheelset that weighed nearly 3 kgs despite being just 20 inches. Everything on went against the name "Hooligan".

In other words, Cannondale cut every possible corner and shipped it out to its expected demise. But that wasn't enough so when it was in production, Hoolis were priced nearly the same as fantastic CAAD 10 and 12s. Anyone with little sense knew this was a terrible value. As a consolation, the bike looked radical. And the frameset rode beautifully. That frameset was the reason I didn't care about the equipment as I already had plans cooking up for it. This bike had so much potential in it and I had to make it better!

Changes planned

Groupset -
The Nexus 3 speed IGH needed to go. I took a couple of rides on it totaling about 50kms and decided there is no way this system will stay. The 3 speed system suffers from extremely limited range. The gears go from easy to still -easy to hard. No middle ground. I never found a comfortable cadence on it. Secondly the grip shifter. Rubbery and imprecise its hard to believe Shimano makes such sloppy shifters. And lastly, the IGH just does not like to coast freely. I opened the hub up which was brand new, cleaned and greased everything just to see if it spun freely but nope. That thing just won't spin. So yes, I decided to replace it with a regular 11/12 speed derailleur system.

But bike this funky deserved something unique so I looked into Shimano's past products and found a unicorn called Metrea. I doubt many people have seen it. Dubbed as "Urban" groupset, Metrea was Shimano's answer to a question that nobody asked and as expected it vanished without much fanfare. While I would have loved to install entire groupset, I was unable to find the whole deal. So I settled on shifters (the most important part) and rear derailleur. The shifters are 1x11 so need of front derailleur.

There were many reasons for this groupset to sink but first and foremost the proprietary shifter dimensions that can be installed on only a couple of handlebars made specifically for Metrea. As far as my search goes Shimano's PRO components made a bar for it and another company called Ergotec made one for it - all these bars are now nearly impossible to find anywhere. The companies that made these bars have long gotten rid of tooling too as just within 4 years, Shinano pulled the plug on whole thing in 2020.
I got lucky to lay my hands on one after months long search. Eventually, it had to be shipped from Spain at eye watering shipping charge.

My plan was to use 105 GS derailleur and that was a mistake as I found out. More on that later.

The bars in question:

Brakes -
Cable pull mechanical brakes had to go. Those were terrible just like the Nexus hub. Metrea is a hydraulic groupset so that automatically meant bike would be getting hydraulic disc brakes. Since I didn't have Metrea brake calipers, I settled on Magura calipers which work well with Shimano shifters.

Drivertrain -
Super heavy FSA crank to be replaced with 5Dev copies and 52t chainring. 11-34, 11 speed 105 cassette, 11 speed chain and 105 long cage derailleur. 29mm DUB 68mm threaded bottom bracket.

Wheelset -
This was a complicated one. The bike came with Lefty Fatty Solo front fork which uses special Lefty hub wheel while the rear wheel had IGH hub on it. I could re-lace the rear wheel with regular hub but that turned out to be an expensive proposition. Decided to ditch the entire wheelset and fork because finding a reasonably priced 20 inch Lefty wheelset with rear hub is nearly impossible. On the other hand there are plenty of 20 inch mini-velo specific regular wheelsets that install on a normal fork. I got LitePro 20 inch wheelset from eBay. LitePro is a fairly well known budget brand making interesting components for mini-velos/foldables. The wheelset came in at 1790 grams - still lighter than the JASCO 2.0 disc wheelset from factory.

With the new wheelset I decided to get new tires too. Fortunately my favorite tires come in 20 inch variety too, the Panaracers. I got the tan walled gravel tires for this build.

Rebuild ensues

All the parts

Stripped to bits. This was easy. All external cables. No "integrated" nonsense at all. Even the front brake hose is routed externally.

Uses eccentric bottom bracket shell for making single speed conversion easy. But thankfully installing new threaded BB inside it is no different from a regular BB shell. I used a DUB 29mm road bottom bracket after removing the original square taper.

Nexus IGH does not need derailleur hanger but Cannondale (fortunately) made it easy to switch to derailleur system by providing holes in the frame as well as compatible derailleur hanger.

Good riddance

11 speed cassette goes onto the new wheel. Not a strong climber so I used Shimano 105 11/34. Tan walled Panaracers already installed.

The fork steerer was just a tad bit longer. Used a metal pipe cutter (not recommended) carefully. To summarize, with the pipe cutter I made a deep cut about 90% of the carbon's thickness and cut rest of the material with hacksaw.

Fork cut to length and installed

Cannondale used these old style bearing ring v/s sealed bearings in the headset.

Replaced that with sealed bearings and compression ring. The Lefty fork is 1.5 inch, new one is 1 1/8 inches so had to use reducer cups. Worked beautifully.

Stem no go. Quickly realized that because of the peculiar geometry of this frameset, a road specific 6/10 degree stem was out of question. It made the sitting posture too extreme. During the final assembly I replaced that stem with silly looking +35 degree stem. In the hindsight I could have kept the fork uncut.

All set for final assembly, and a new very upright stem.

ALL DONE:

A while later, I found some "ARAYA" decals for the wheels. Removed the original decals and replaced them.
Eagle eyed amongst you might notice how dangerously close the 105 GS cage derailleur comes to the ground:

I had to replace it with shorter length derailleur that would still shift 11/34 cassettes. Not many exist, so the rare Metrea came to the rescue again. This unicorn while being short cage, shifts 34t cassette comfortably. The derailleur was an eBay find.

Wrap

A wonderfully weird, one of a kind Hooligan. Rides amazing. Looks smashing, at least to me. And I have a feeling this is quite possibly the only one with Shimano Metrea on it.

The bullhorn bars and shifters have completely changed the dynamics of this bike. Those shifters have different ergonomics to them compared to regular drop bar shifters and yet feel quite natural when riding.

Little Hooligan is now more lively, accelerates like a bat out of hell and can maintain speeds of 26-30kmph on flats without having to pedal like a madman, thanks to 52t front chainring. Oh and the Panaracers even allow mild gravel thrashing. Its quite a thing to ride this bike on gravel!

In the end from a sluggish, dull bike to playful little thing = goal achieved.