BonniRocket - Pretty much done at this point

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Re: BonniRocket

OK, a little more information. Backing up to Friday, I went to pick up the last part needed for the shifter assembly from Jason after work. I wound up being there a bit longer than planned, as he hadn't welded it yet. Well, that and we were hanging out for a while. But by the time I got something to eat and got home, it was 9:00. Anyway, I assembled the shifter mount bracket, shown here with the bushings installed and the barrel adjuster for the brake cable in place.
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The piece on the right is what I was waiting on. It's basically a shaft collar clamp with the lever arm previously machined out of a chunk of square stock with holes drilled in it. Also here is the pivot shaft for the brake that it attaches to. The shaft goes through the bushings, with the actuator lever outside on one end and the cable lever on the inside end. More on that later.

Then I decided to paint the inside of the tank halves and the fender with POR15 to keep them from rusting away more.
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Since POR is sticky stuff and hard to remove (I still have it on my hands), its best not to handle the parts until dry. So I called it good for the day there.

Saturday, I spent most of the day working on the bike. I skipped going on the club ride because I thought it'd take up too much time. I assembled up the tank and put the left side in place. The left side has the brackets that snap onto the frame, which in this situation allows the right side to act as merely an access cover.
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I ran into a snag with the cabling - Sturmey Archer prefinished off the brake cable, so I couldn't readily trim it to length or feed it through the adjuster or lever arms. I had to slot the lever arm to let me slide the cable into the keeper hole, and do the same where the barrel adjuster was supposed to be. That meant devising another way to keep the cable in place, because with out a cable casing stop, pulling the brake lever pulled the whole cable forward, case and all, and didn't pull on the cable itself. The shifter cable was somewhat less of a bother, at least at the tank end. I used a "noodle" from a V-brake to get the cable to turn rearward. It slipped right into the cable adjuster coming off of the shifter itself, allowing me to use it as designed. That was fortunate, because the shift cable doesn't have a hub-end adjuster like the 3-speed hubs do. More detail:
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I wound up putting a nylon nut over the cable casing that had been slotted, then put a band-type hose clamp around that. The hose clamp squeezed the nut around the casing and effectively locked it onto the casing. This is right behind where it passes through the mount bracket, so that prevents the casing from sliding forward. I also found that using the brake lever tended to push the tank backwards, it's snap-in mount brackets could resist the reaction force on the brake cable. So, again, I found some band clamps and placed them around the lower top tube right behind the tank brackets, to give them something to stop against.

Anyway, here's the outside of the tank, showing the base of the quadrant where the brake and shifter levers attach:
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And here's the other end of the brake cable, where attaches to the hub:
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I'd show a picture of how the shifter cable attached, but it's pretty well hidden behind the dropouts. I had to muck about a bit with hooking up the cable on that end, because the instructions were a bit vague. But in the end, I was able to make it work and get it adjusted correctly.
 
Re: BonniRocket

At this point in the narration, I was more than a little irritable because a few of these tasks took more screwing around then planned, and it was pretty muggy & hot yesterday. So, despite being hot, I decided I needed to go for a ride. Riding a bike has now firmly estabilished itself as my preferred method of stress relief. Anyway, I rode to my parents' house, about 14 miles by rail trail mostly.
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I needed to raid my dad's hardware bins anyway for a few bits and pieces. It was just getting dark when I got back.

After screwing around with cable adjustment a bit more (including diagnosing why the brake cable wouldn't move at all), I then wrapped the cables up as loosely as possible and tucked them into the bodywork:
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That was the other trouble with premade cables - Sturmey Archer foolishly assumed I was mounting these to controls on the handlebars. I mean, who does that, right? :mrgreen: So, the cable was quite a bit longer than required, and trying to fit the excess length in somewhere without coiling it up too tight was a problem. The coiling that I did do still adds drag to the cable movement. However, the lever arms are long enough to be able to overcome that.
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In fact, they're really too long to be practical. But they do look cool!

Then it was on to running the wiring. No problem there, except I couldn't get any current to flow out of the battery box. I should've checked the wiring on it before hand, but the old contacts were corroded and dry rotted. The positive wire simply broke off. So, I've sort of jerry-rigged the wiring to the battery terminals for now. It works, but I'll revisit that when I have more time. The wiring coming off of the lamp head, I wrapped in tape, then spiralled around the forward fork tube, and passed it between the springs and into the tank. By putting it on the centerline, it only requires a minimal amount of extra length to accomodate turing the fork.

At last, I could button up the tank (since the wiring runs through it) and fasten the fairing panels on. At first, I thought I could use doublesided tape for the panels, but it didn't hold well enough. I wound up using #4 screws into the seat tube and fender. All things considered, I think it did a pretty good job keeping the cable & wiring hidden.

Finally, off of the stand!
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I went to take it for a ride around midnight, only to realize that bars and stem weren't tight enough and the brakes need further adjustment because they didn't do much. Oh, and the front hub was loose. I thought I'd adjusted the cones in tight enough, but apparently not. At this, I decided these things can wait till morning, and posted the outside photos show before.
 
Re: BonniRocket

Pictures taken this morning, after fixing the issues mentioned above:
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And, I'm off to find a location to take "offical" photos. The wind is up, and it looks like a storm is moving in, so I might be stuck doing indoor only. We'll see...
 
Re: BonniRocket - about done as its going to get

Well, I posted that I was off to find locations for taking official photos of the BonniRocket. Of course, in truth, it wasn't immediately, right then at that moment. But I was right about the storm. So, I took a tour of the Rochester area as a whole, looking for places that I could get some decent shots. First stop was the canal park in Bushnell's Basin:

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It was a little cloudy, but there was still sunshine. I snapped a bunch of pictures, was visited by a couple terriers that were on long leashes, and was told by their people that this was a "really cool bike". Thanks!

Anyway, I moved on as the sky started to get a bit more grey. A few miles up the road in Pittsford, I started to see rain drops on the windshield before I pulled into Lock 32 park. When I got there, it looked like it had just rained a little and more was imminent. Heavy overcast skies by now, thunder rumbled in the distance.

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It started sprinkling again as I loaded the Rocket back into the Mountaineer. I popped into Park Ave Bike Shop to see if they had any sort of display/parking stand that I could use to hold the bike up, as the wood blocks under a pedal proved a little tricky. Unfortunately, no. I'm pretty sure the kid in the shop knew what I was describing, but didn't have anything like that. When I went to leave the shop, the sprinkle had taken a torrential down turn. It came down so hard and fast that the standing water in the road got deep in a hurry. I'm pretty sure I saw dolphins swim by out front of Bruger's Bagels.

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Definately appreciate ground clearance and 31" tires on a day like this, even on pavement.

So, I wandered over toward my third stop, the rain not really giving up much, and I stopped off for a quick lunch. Then I paid Bert's Bikes a visit for the same reason as before, and they had single bike storage racks, but nothing like what I had in mind. A quick stop for fuel, and I was back on the move. Over at Jetview drive I found an industrial setting, which provided neat contrast to the canal shots from before.

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Yes, I took these shots inside a warehouse. But I didn't find a place to break in or anything, I have a key to the building. 8) On the outside:

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The weather had improved markedly just before I left, and I actually saw some bits of blue sky again.

Then lastly, I circled back past my folks' house in Honeoye Falls, and took advantage of their property as a backdrop before taking them out to dinner. By now, the sun was out and the sky was clearing.

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And my father got a shot of me riding the BonniRocket in the yard:

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I can comment that steel toe clips and sandals don't cooperate together. So, now I have a about 200 more photos to sort through (no exaggeration this time). I hope to have something posted in the finished bike section before I go to bed, but we'll see how that goes. I think I need a spot of ice cream first...
 
Great to see this baby out in the daylight. There are so many wicked details incorporated in this build!!
BRAVO BRUDDERMAN!!!!!
 
Peatbog said:
The picture of the bike on the road looks really cool--I'm hoping you have more road pictures. That bike looks great on the road (okay, it looks great everywhere, but that isn't the point).

Thanks, man. There are some, but I didn't spend a lot of time on the paths where I'd ride due to the weather. I've got to go through the rest of the pictures still, I olny got through about half of them last night before I fell asleep.
 
kingfish254 said:
Great to see this baby out in the daylight.
No doubt! It's been hanging around in the shop for far too long! :mrgreen:

kingfish254 said:
There are so many wicked details incorporated in this build!!
BRAVO BRUDDERMAN!!!!!
Thanks! Stay tuned for more pics, there's a whole bunch that I'd like to post. I'm not sure how many is too many, but it'll probably be limited by how much I have to time to deal with...
 
Wow! I know this thread has been dead for a while, but that shifter and brake lever combo is an amazing idea!

Would you mind if I incorporate something along those lines into my Cadillac build?

Build thread: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=65514&start=0

Luke.
 

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