While working on my fat tire boardtracker Old No. 3, one of my cousins jokingly asked when I was going to make her one. I still had the leftover running gear from the boardtracker’s Huffy frame. I figured “Pshaw, I’ve got this!” I found a nice old girls frame on Craigslist that just needed a couple of things. (Thanks to junknuts by the way.)
Yeah, so after picking up the frame and sitting down with the donor parts I realized that karma was coming back to kick me for my overconfidence. It was a 24” frame. Not gonna work so well with 26” running gear. Okay, so at this point in for a penny in for a pound. I liked the looks of the 140 spoke rims, but not enough to run them on one of my bikes. This was a perfect excuse to do a build with them.
A Ross chain guard was going to give me plenty of room for paint.
The tires that came with the rims were just a tad too tall to stuff into the fenders. A quick swap for a smaller tire and we’re back on track.
Since she was going to be riding around suburbia and I wasn’t going to try to put standard reflectors in the wheels, I borrowed an idea I had seen on the forum. Someone had it on a Bratz bike. I put 3mm white LEDs in the rim. The test install with them just stuck to the spokes looked good. I drilled eight holes in each rim: 7 for the LEDs and 1 larger one for a JST plug. For a clean look, all of the wiring and batteries are in the tire. The lights turn on when the other half of the JST plug is inserted.
So I had this girl’s bike with bright shiny wheels; now I needed a paint scheme. One of the guys I work with had this sticker on the passenger side window of his Jeep for his wife.
So as a laid back cruiser with a tropical theme I came up with Island Hopper as the name. If I was going to use that design I needed a better picture of the sticker. A piece of printer paper and I was in business.
Now for the color…. A similar aqua blue was going to be my first choice, but there weren’t any rattle can options readily available. A little Photoshop work, some perusing of the local auto part store, and purple it was.
After the base coat of white pearl, I masked off what I wanted to keep white. There is a better description of my masking process in my Old No. 3 build.
The Metalizer goes on almost like a candy coat. So the white pearl makes it really pop in the sun.
I don’t have any pictures, but I rebuilt the headlight with bright white LEDs. Anyway, it was a great surprise Christmas present.
Yeah, so after picking up the frame and sitting down with the donor parts I realized that karma was coming back to kick me for my overconfidence. It was a 24” frame. Not gonna work so well with 26” running gear. Okay, so at this point in for a penny in for a pound. I liked the looks of the 140 spoke rims, but not enough to run them on one of my bikes. This was a perfect excuse to do a build with them.
A Ross chain guard was going to give me plenty of room for paint.
The tires that came with the rims were just a tad too tall to stuff into the fenders. A quick swap for a smaller tire and we’re back on track.
Since she was going to be riding around suburbia and I wasn’t going to try to put standard reflectors in the wheels, I borrowed an idea I had seen on the forum. Someone had it on a Bratz bike. I put 3mm white LEDs in the rim. The test install with them just stuck to the spokes looked good. I drilled eight holes in each rim: 7 for the LEDs and 1 larger one for a JST plug. For a clean look, all of the wiring and batteries are in the tire. The lights turn on when the other half of the JST plug is inserted.
So I had this girl’s bike with bright shiny wheels; now I needed a paint scheme. One of the guys I work with had this sticker on the passenger side window of his Jeep for his wife.
So as a laid back cruiser with a tropical theme I came up with Island Hopper as the name. If I was going to use that design I needed a better picture of the sticker. A piece of printer paper and I was in business.
Now for the color…. A similar aqua blue was going to be my first choice, but there weren’t any rattle can options readily available. A little Photoshop work, some perusing of the local auto part store, and purple it was.
After the base coat of white pearl, I masked off what I wanted to keep white. There is a better description of my masking process in my Old No. 3 build.
The Metalizer goes on almost like a candy coat. So the white pearl makes it really pop in the sun.
I don’t have any pictures, but I rebuilt the headlight with bright white LEDs. Anyway, it was a great surprise Christmas present.
