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Ok this is my 2nd build in 40yrs, my 1st was a Raleigh 20 with a car steering wheel, at 11yrs of age, got some weird looks,
Now after 3kids and lots of old bikes from those kids I decided to make a gangster looking harley type thingy bike,
It started with a 240/40/17 car tyre for the rear and a 26 mountain bike cheapie front disc wheel,. Lots of love and care, welding in dressing gown, gumboots and scarf I worked on this bike during the day while resting from night shift,. By my own admissions I am The worst welder in the world, I've only just stopped welding in thongs or even bare feet some days so dont be surprised to see blobs of weld holding everything together,
1st pic is building a rear sub frame around the rear tyre, being the centrepiece of the build it was the place to start,
 

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Next is attachment Of The rear sub frame to the main frame which as you may have guessed is all made up as ive progressed, thats right this whole project was made up in my head and things got fabricated etc, all as i stood and looked at it, no plans were written down and a tape measure was only used at small intervals, the majority of this build is done with the good old eyeometer,
 

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After attaching The head stem I attached the forks n wheel, still with original bars, it was at this point the project began to resemble the vision i had in my head, it my vision was becoming a reality,
You may also notice ive turned the gooseneck 180 , this moves the bars back and gives the front end a lower slicked back look which is what im chasing , the original Bars are still on and get replaced soon with custom made bars
 

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Heres some info on the rear wheel set up, while hastily put together its fit for purpose,
It is a 17 inch car rim after all and I wanted to use it on a pushy so after cutting the free wheel 5spd cassette hub, out of the donor bike, I then cut it in half, axle n all and lengthened both, then I cut a 60mm steam pipe to desired length and welded each half of the hub's to their respective ends , the pic shows my first attempt that failed, what happened was the wheel was completed and ready for final welds when it rolled off the bench and Kaboom pushed a bearing race right out, so the 2nd attempt has the 5spd and the failure only had single sprocket freewheel hub,
Then I carefully placed that steam pipe through the wheel and carefully center it and heavy tac with welder.this allows the use of force to fine tune the centring of the fabricated hub, it dosnt spin true, 2,3mm rise n fall, but during testing its absolutely unnoticeable, The bikes not fast enough for it to cause drama, it spins correctly from left to right but has the slightest rise n fall,
 

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Then came final welds, it was important to have the wheel on the rear frame when doing this, warping and distortion can rear its ugly head up so welds were kept to 2-3cm long before hitting with water, then spin the wheel to check the hub hadn't warped through excessive heat, I learnt this the hard way, the rear subframe was all straight n correct when tac'd together but after welding it all the thing was pointing all over The place ha ha ha.
As you Can see we have the 5spd cassette now and some giant blobby welds covering the entire distance on the chain side and on the inside of the wheel I cut up some 12mm solid bar and put 5 around to shift the support off the Centerline hole on the wheel,
As I said it's crude but works so well
 

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Ok so I eventually want to motorise this behemoth of a machine and will be using electric power, I needed a drive system where either of the drives, pedal or electric, can override the other with minimal fuss, I went about welding a 22tooth freewheel cog on the opposite side of the wheel to the 5 pot cassette,
I plan to attach a much larger sprocket to this cog later on but was greasing up all axles n bearings when it was a good opportunity to get the hard job out the way,
Ive simply placed the threaded cog straigh over the bearing hub n race, the race actually faired pretty well considering how close im trying to weld this together, as ya can see it was a tediously figity job but im confident its gonna hold,
Now I'll put the wheel back together and begin final preparations for the reveal 😎
 

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Then The gears were sorted, I had to use a dual chain step around system, this is to get the chains out and around the 245/40/17 tyre,
Ive just used sprockets n cogs laying about after the donor bikes were chopped Up, a spare front BMXhub was used and a steel sprocket welded to each side, dropouts were used and simple heavy guage,6mm, brackets made and I mounted them in position, now the front hub has become a free spinning axle with cogs attached at either end, and simply bolts into the dropouts I made, As if it was bolting into its space on the forks.,. Tooth selection is irrelevant, one cogs bigger than the other and they Can be swapped around.
A simple Shimano derailleur swaps out the 5 cogs at the rear.
I used a tensioner on the front chain coz there's no adjustments in the dual sprocket interchange, to have a sliding dropout at each end of the 2nd chain is pointless because the 2nd chain has the deraliur,
 

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I also had to put some gussets in, again, just used whats in the shed, 6mm plate will do nicely married to the 2.5mm/30mm top n bottom tubes, these were joined to the head tube and crankcase, again just grabbed off the donor bike chop pile, a full-size one piece BMX crank keeps the torque flowing to the rear tyre. and the bmxs pedals came along ss well. You can see a big long support over the crankcase. The top tube gusset is never gonna give either
 

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So now I added some brakes and tested it, to my surprise it was too heavily geared and was still a handful on the biggest rear cog so I turned the interchange sprockets 180 and this was fixed, much easier pedaling,
But the thing was unbelievably tiring to ride, I weighed it and she comes in at a whopping 45kgs, add to this the crankcase being so far forward and the seat is only just above knee height meant every push on the pedals end's up also pushing you backwards off the seat, to counter this you had to grip extra hard on the bars and constantly pull with arms every turn of the crank, you could only pedal 30yrd and you'd de shagged!
So to fix this I used an old backrest off an old project boat,
Well this transformed the entire bike, I can now sit n pedal with just a finger n thumb on the grips, one handed too, now you only get tired when biking too far, the backrest is great for digging for a hill on similar,
This is the first backrest, it was great and comfy but was too big and was detracting from the look I was trying to get,. Ive since modified this and you'll see a small but same style padding in final reveal, the backrest pole is a single flat bar spring,8mm /50mm which gives a bit and thats great,the bars were also too low during testing so because they're a permanent fixture I cut into them 2/3rds and bent them up and re-welded, they now sit at a much higher and flat position, transforming the comfort level too.
 

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Done n dusted, replaced all brake n gear cables with new stuff,
Will put up the completed project in the finished thread's .
Thanks all for watching this fabulous journey ive undertaken, all up we're looking at 9 weeks from acquisition of the rim n tyre, which is where it all started, admittedly some welds are dead set shocking but they got better towards The end, I plan on having a break for a week or so and then start the motorisation.
 

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In your finished thread, you didn't lead with a Main Voting Pic, so I picked this one for you from the ones you had. This will be the one that shows up in the main voting thread for Class 2.

3 - Blue Meanie - Son of Kradus.jpg
 

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