So you may have seen that I recently built my first bike; the "Brutto".
Anyway a mate of mine really liked it and asked me to build him one, but using a 16" wheeled BMX as the donor bike. I liked the idea, so here I go. . . .
I got it like this:
This is the inspiration:
Strip down starts, parts like bearings are ordered and everything else gets cleaned and overhauled.
I've never seen how a coaster hub works before.
and rebuilt:
Although the original Brutto has an iron cross chainwheel as its main feature, we didn't want to put one on this little bike. I looked around for anything that could pass for something similar as the one on it was bent. I had no luck, but in the end I used the middle ring that was originally on the Brutto (it started like as a MTB) and went with the principal that black with a silver outer keeps with the theme well enough.
Here's the front wheel after rebuilding it. I would have preferred not having "lowrider" on them, but they were the only 16" whitewalls I could find (Of course, as soon as I bought them I did find blank ones). :roll:
To give you a sense of scale:
To replicate the Brutto's saddle, I used an old sprung saddle I already had and added some press studs to immitate it
I've shaved the chainguard mounts off the frame and have started frenching in the triangle on the seat stays. Also you'll see in the photo below that all the drop outs are pretty poor in finish. They're basically just a few spot welds and the tubing of the seat and chain stays have been left open, so I'm going to weld them up to upgrade the finishing quality (and because I want any excuse to practice my tig welding.
Currently most things have been done. Most of the work left to be done is finishing and painting the frame and forks, the rest is just little details.
Here's the progress on the frame so far:
Anyway a mate of mine really liked it and asked me to build him one, but using a 16" wheeled BMX as the donor bike. I liked the idea, so here I go. . . .
I got it like this:
This is the inspiration:
Strip down starts, parts like bearings are ordered and everything else gets cleaned and overhauled.
I've never seen how a coaster hub works before.
and rebuilt:
Although the original Brutto has an iron cross chainwheel as its main feature, we didn't want to put one on this little bike. I looked around for anything that could pass for something similar as the one on it was bent. I had no luck, but in the end I used the middle ring that was originally on the Brutto (it started like as a MTB) and went with the principal that black with a silver outer keeps with the theme well enough.
Here's the front wheel after rebuilding it. I would have preferred not having "lowrider" on them, but they were the only 16" whitewalls I could find (Of course, as soon as I bought them I did find blank ones). :roll:
To give you a sense of scale:
To replicate the Brutto's saddle, I used an old sprung saddle I already had and added some press studs to immitate it
I've shaved the chainguard mounts off the frame and have started frenching in the triangle on the seat stays. Also you'll see in the photo below that all the drop outs are pretty poor in finish. They're basically just a few spot welds and the tubing of the seat and chain stays have been left open, so I'm going to weld them up to upgrade the finishing quality (and because I want any excuse to practice my tig welding.
Currently most things have been done. Most of the work left to be done is finishing and painting the frame and forks, the rest is just little details.
Here's the progress on the frame so far:
That said I do still intend to finish it. Once the weather warms up again, I'll start on prep and paint.
