Freestyled chop-chop-chopper

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Joined
May 8, 2011
Messages
116
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Location
Östhammar, Sweden
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Intro

Well hello everyone! :D
Time to get building again! I'm here to present a project by my buddy and I. It started out as a build which was just a cruiser that was going to be rebuilt a bit. Maybe stretched and a bit lower. But the further the project went the more it became a build from scratch instead. At the point we stand right now it's not exactly much left from the frame we started with, which was one of these badboys. Therefore I thought it would be okey to post it in this category.




Backstory

The cruiser was a bike i bought new about a year ago to be able to get to school every day. But as most bikes it's quite boring unless it's custom. I stumbled across a DIY here on the forum which showed how to widen a rim without welding. It looked like fun so therefore i felt the need to try it. Said and done. It became a 2,5" wide rim with 26x2,125" tire. Really tight fit into the frame but it worked. I've built a matching back rim. Just missing the spokes to be able to put it togheter.



Later on i stretched a 1,75" tire on the rim and painted our car crews name on it "Violent clique"



Be sure to like our facebookpage HERE if you want to see some low cars! I'm quite into cars but when the bankaccount tells me that there's not going to be any more carstuff for the rest of the month i usually get down to ratbikes instead just to keep myself busy. This is my car, as you can se it's pretty low and got some quite wide rims. That's how i think most things on wheels should look. Low and wide!!



Because of my "low and wide"-addiction I would've love to have a real lowrider bike with really wide rims. I've wanted it for a couple of years now but finally I talked one of my friends into helping me (of course the one with the biggest workshop and the best tools). Since my widened rims eventually ended up on another of my builds, I had the blue (quite unused) cruisers frame laying around with no real intention of using it, so that was when we decided to chop that bike up and build something cool of it! :)
This is the bike who got the widen rims. Quite a bobber




Back to the future

We started the project yesterday. We choped up some of the cruiserframe, then after we've done some chopping we started to talk about what we wanted the bike to look like when it was finished. This is where the projectname comes from. Most of the project so far has been chopping bikes apart and freestyling what we should do with the parts. When we started to build the jig to put the wheels up, We still hadn't come up with any design for the frame. We just knew how wide rims we wanted and how low to the ground we wanted the frame to be! :p



We started of by cutting out the rear dropouts and put on a wheel so we could build a jig around them. After that the cutting begun for real. We chopped basically every tube on the cruiser, two other bikes and cut a radimentpipe to use as the rear swing.


















Puzzles


Now there was not much left of any of the bikes we had. But we got a lot of tubes so, time for some puzzling. At this point we knew quite well how we wanted the frame to turn out. Now it was just a question of getting everything straight. As we didn't feel the urge to spend a lot of time building on a jig, we eyeballed most of the bike to be honest.
As you can se here below, not much of the original bike is left. Here we only had the top and head tube left that we where planning to use. We extended the toptube backwards and then measured the tubes for the rear swing, cut them and welded them on.












First time on wheels

We did a quick fitting of the rear swing and rebuilt the original fork just to get the front wheel where it's supposed to be when everything's done. We're planning on building a triplefork eventually. This was just a first mockup, so we could put the bike down on the ground and be able to see if it needed to be longer, shorter, higher, angled up or down etc. We ended up extended the top tube a bit forward.









"Round is also a shape"

As i said, at this point we knew how we wanted the frame to look. Therefore we needed to bend some tubes and as the tube didn't fit very well in the tubebender we created our own. Borrowed the idea from another buildthread i've seen here. Worked really good.
After bending the tubes and welded both them and the bottom tube to the rest of the frame we took some smaler tubes from the original cruiser and created the lower part of the rear swing. It came out with a real nice flow to it!
















This is it... for now...

This is how far we've come til todays date. We got the frame mocked up. Next on the schedule we're going to put the bb on there and after that, building a fork. Then of to the wheels which are going to be something really special if it all goes as planned. The rear swing's gossiping about how wide the wheels are gonna be. Actually it will be quite a tight fit back there ;)
Hope you guys who check in here liked what you've seen so far and that you will also drop a comment letting us know what you think!!
last but not least a BIG shoutout to my friend "Beetle" for helping me building this thing! :D

 
Nice build! very cool!

I flinched every time I saw a pic with the grinder in it, put the guard back on that thing! None of the cuts you were doing there required the guard removed...
Trust me man, after spending many years in the metal fabrication game, you get to see some bad injuries!

Luke.
 
Wow I'm so happy to see something like this in sweden!!!! This means cruiser meets are actually one step closer. Looks awesome buddy!
 
I see that someone liked my idea of tube bending with a car wheel worked.. This cruiser is looking pretty streched.. Lets see how this cruiser is going to look when it's all done.!!
 
I really like how you did the chain stays (the proper name for the lower half of the rear). That came out well.

Thanks for the input! :) And sorry, but as english isn't my first language it's probably not the last time i'm not gonna use the correct term for a certain part on the bike :p


Nice build! very cool!

I flinched every time I saw a pic with the grinder in it, put the guard back on that thing! None of the cuts you were doing there required the guard removed...
Trust me man, after spending many years in the metal fabrication game, you get to see some bad injuries!

Luke.

Glad you like it!

I always use the guard on the grinder i have at home. My pal on the other hand refuse to have one on his since he thinks it blocks your sight. I often let him do the cutting for me when we're in his garage just so i don't have to use it :p

Wow I'm so happy to see something like this in sweden!!!! This means cruiser meets are actually one step closer. Looks awesome buddy!

yeah, more people here should be building bikes!! And not just that "extended fork" kind of crap you often see the younger boys do!
Thank you very much :)

I see that someone liked my idea of tube bending with a car wheel worked.. This cruiser is looking pretty streched.. Lets see how this cruiser is going to look when it's all done.!!

Yeah it was really smart, hope you don't mind that we used it!
Hopefully it will look good :thumbsup:
 
Miss... can I have a fork?

Okey, just so you won't think that the project ain't moving forward, I'm gonna throw in a quick update on what's been happening.
We decided when we did the mock up of the frame that we would go with a triple fork. As neither of us want to put money into this project and buy a fork, we just tried to build one instead. Here below are the process of the building, it's pretty straight forward...

So we started of by drawing out a crown on a piece of metal



Then we drilled all the holes





Cutting the pieces out



And Luke, look what i found!!



All left at this point was to rounded of some edges and put the whole thing together





And test it on the bike ofc



As you may notice this process didn't involve any dropouts. That's because we havn't done them yet. We're actually thinking about redoing the whole fork but in aluminum instead. In that case there's gonna be a bit more offset to it. We'll see what will happend. But for now the bike will be standing like this for a while. My bud needs to spend time on his vw bug which he's looking to repaint and I will be busy refurbishing splitrims for my car.
Please drop a comment! See you when we see you :)
 
I'll see. Let's meet up in the summer for a cruise somewhere! A show and tell you might call it. Im in sthlm.
The fork looks good. I think you should make a mount between the crowns and put the biggest light you can find inbetween!!! Contact me on Facebook and we can arrange something in the summer! John Hedman mechanic at Gamla stans cykel it says on my profile.
 
Man the bike is very nice, and I love your bimmer! Any more specs on it?
 
Man the bike is very nice, and I love your bimmer! Any more specs on it?
thanks for the appreciation!
well it's a 323. lowered on coils, ~85mm front and ~60mm inte the back. Wheels on the pic are "rondell 0067" 17x9" squared 2-pc split (sold them recently). Then it's just some minor details on it. Like m3 mirrors and stuff :)
 
Nah, but we came up with at new idea for the wheels and therefore the frame would need quite a rebuild to not have the frame laying on the ground. So we're thinking about ditching this one and then rebuild it with the design just enough changed to go along with the rims we though of
 
Hi eller hej som vi säger i Svedala...

We (not me...) have a meeting in Stockholm in October " Clean and sexy" I thing it ws the 6:th and it's for cruicers,tall bikes, rat rod and etc.
I read about it in a magazin and it was Svala Bicycle club and Black Lable Rebel club.
I just piced up some frames to build someting to show but i havent started yet.

//JOhan
 
Hi eller hej som vi säger i Svedala...

We (not me...) have a meeting in Stockholm in October " Clean and sexy" I thing it ws the 6:th and it's for cruicers,tall bikes, rat rod and etc.
I read about it in a magazin and it was Svala Bicycle club and Black Lable Rebel club.
I just piced up some frames to build someting to show but i havent started yet.

//JOhan

tjäna!

was invited to a bikemeet in sthlm last fall by dirtmechanic (although i didn't make it). Back then i was thinking exactly the same thing as i'm thinking now when you mentioned this meet. Why put a bikemeet so late in the year? why not in the middle of the summer when it's the best time for cruising around? :p
I mean, october in sweden is most likely pretty darn cold!
 
oh and also...
it's more or less decided that this frame will be scraped and rebuilt. Most likely in aluminum. Probably with the same design but just with some minor changes.
It will take som time before we begin though since my bud will be showing his car at scandinavias biggest carshow now in april. That means we have alot to do until then so this project will have to wait a bit.
stay tuned :)
 

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