Of Three Minds

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As you can see from my last post, I like ape hangers and banana seats...
That's the direction I'm going with this build as well.
Mocked up an old seat to test ride...View attachment 159623
I liked this, but wanted to try a laid back seat post. Had to order one and wait...
Here's the first configuration...
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Not comfortable with the shorter Dyno apes...
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Brought the seat post down and it made a world of difference, much better riding form. I like the lines of the bike with the seat this way.

Then I tried something I haven't done before and flipped the seat post...View attachment 159626
This was the most comfortable riding configuration, but I'm iffy about the lines/ look of it. We'll see...

I've had some fiberglass seats that came out of old office chairs for a bunch of years.
I've always had the idea of cutting them up to make a banana seat, so I decided to finally give it a go for this build.
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I got out my angle grinder and got to cutting.
I got the rough form of a seat cut out, but didn't like the downward lip on the front of it. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of this stage.
Since I was cutting off the front of it, and I have a number of old nanners that have to be redone, I thought to combine the two.
I picked an old seat that I liked shape of and took it apart.
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After a lot of rust and old glue removal, I started to shape the fiberglass form to fit the pan of the seat.
So in the end, instead of making the seat from scratch, I'll be extending an old seat into something new and hopefully better. View attachment 159633View attachment 159635
More work to do on it of course, but this is where I'm at...

Gotta say I've been following quite a few of the builds and I'm digging the heck out of them.
I love a big king queen chopper seat!

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I like the fact that you're not afraid to roll up your sleeves and "make it work." The bike has a great stance in all the side views. I'm watching with great interest.
 
Major step in the development of this bike. I assembled and installed the Nexus 7 speed wheel on the bike.
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Man... It Rocks!!!!
I'm gonna ride the heck out of this bike...
It also helps that I put a slightly bigger front tire on it. I thought it would fun to have a super skinny slick on the front, I was running a 700×28c. I was not comfortable in turns, not fun. Switched it out with a 700x32c with a bit of tread on the sides... World of Difference.

In the long run I'm going to have to figure out a cable stay for behind the BB. Weirdest thing, this frame has cable stays, but the back one behind the BB is on the other side leading back to the brake side.
Considering maybe going through the frame? I'm not a huge fan of cables on my bikes. I only have two bikes that are Nexus 3 speed coaster brakes, so only two bikes with cables.

Thanks again for looking... get to building.
 
So now that I've got the basic idea of the main points of my bike settled, I've spent the last week prepping the bike for paint.
That's right, like I said in an earlier post, I've never really liked the yellow.
I wire wheeled all the paint from the frame and tree fork caps.
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After the wire wheel, I went over everything with a flapper wheel. One af those reddish, rust color ones.
Now I'm in the process of hand sanding everything with 320 grit.

Along the lines of the name of my build, I've been Of Three Minds as to how I want to paint the bike. I was thinking a two tone, painting everything including chrome.
I was afraid the chrome forks were too rusted. They're a set of forks from an adult sized OCC Schwinn I picked up from Craigslist years ago. I didn't take a before pic, but they cleaned up great. Steel wool 0000 with PB Blaster, will actually polish later.
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So then I decided to leave all my chrome shiny and go two tone on the frame. But what colors, what configuration???
Painting bikes isn't my Forte. I've done a few with mixed results, none ended badly, just real nice to passable.
I wanted this to be Nice... something I would be overly proud of.
I spent two hours, going through paint chips and custom swabs, with one of the coolest cats I've met in awhile. If you live in or around Phoenix go to Arizona Automotive Paints, those dudes Rock!
Here's what I came home with...
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Custom paints in rattle cans, cause I don't own a sprayer and don't want to invest in one.
My main colors are going to be a somewhat pearlescent purple, from Volkswagen used for Audis. The second is a color shift, yellow gold, to rust gold, with green and blue green mixed in there somewhere.
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I vacillated about the " how " to two tone it . I came up with a few different configurations ,but ultimately came up with my final plan that I'm going with. My chain ring is from a girl's Sears Spyder, and I'm going to do an homage to their paint scheme...
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I plan on doing color shift on the tree fork caps, headtube, BB, and dropouts. The rest of the frame will be the purple. I want to fade the color shift into the purple, no hard lines.
So that's my plans , color shift fading into purple with shiny chrome.
I'm pushing my skill limits higher, but I have faith I can pull it off. Side note... it better turn out because that paint cost as much or more than all the components of the bike combined.

Again, thanks for looking...
 
Smaller update, I've been working on my seat. I've trimmed down the fiberglass to fit into the pan. I then ground off the rivets that attach the pan and seatpost connector thing, you know the arch thingy.... you tell me what its called.
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I drilled through the fiberglass, and I'll bolt the pan and fiberglass together there.
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So that will be one attachment point. Still to do, build up the side to close the gap at the back, and figure out attachment points at the back of the seat. I also need to do more shaping of the fiberglass back.
 

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Well it's been almost a week since I posted, but I have been working on the build.
Spent almost all of Friday hand sanding 320 grit the parts I plan on painting, as well as the frame. I also took the crank I might use and cleaned it up. It was all rusty crusty so I thought that was perfect to take to bare metal to paint.
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I've always heard it was hard to paint chrome so I figured since this chrome was ruined and gone it was perfect to sand down to bare metal.

I spent most of the week and just about all of Saturday working on my seat.
The next big step was to fill the gaps between the seatpan and the fiberglass base. I started with making a tracing of the gap on cardboard ( finally got fancy using CAD ). Wasn't sure what I was going to use though, because it has to be somewhat sturdy and it needs to curve inward and up a little. Watching @OddJob s build I gave thought to maybe try my hand at fiberglassing, or maybe trying to shape some sheet metal. Looking around at what I have I got the idea of just using more of the fiberglass seat insert. There was a part of the top corner of the insert that curved back and in. I cut out a part using my cardboard tracing, and it was almost perfect.
I fit it to the fiberglass seat base and then attached the seatpan on top. Some trimming and filing and it was good. Repeated the process for the other side and mocked it up.
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Now I had to trim the lower base to fit the form of the seat.
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Put some screws to the front and some corner braces on the side, clamped it down here and there. Time for some JB Weld inside.
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Came back to it last night and Success!

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So now I'm JB Welding the outside seams.
Next up I have to get a bolt/screw long enough to secure the top of the seat to the seat pan and seat base.
I spent some time at a discount bulk fabric shop last week, and I believe I might have found the vinyls I want to cover the seat...
Other big step in the build this week is to JB Weld the filed down bearing cups to the bare headtube before I can paint.

Thanks again for looking really digging the builds this year, though I have only been following the Build 1 threads. I probably should look at some of the crazy stuff in Build 2, but I get jealous of all the cool tubes and welding equipment and skill lol.
 

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Any progress on that killer nanner!!!!??????
BTW, The cable guide that you found on the brake side of the frame was for a roller brake cable.
 
Hey all,
Haven't posted in too long, but I have been working on my bike build.
She's coming along slowly but surely. I was working on getting it together for paint and then decided I wanted to do more with it.
Structurally I moved the cable guide for the roller brake ( thanks for the info @kingfish254 )over to the drive side for the Nexus 7.
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I didn't get a picture after sanding because I broke my phone and didn't have my new one for a few days.
I also attached the head tube bearing cups.
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So after that I was going to finish cleaning it up and going to paint when the bike said No I want more...
And that's when I went down the rabbit hole.
 
Any news from the wabbit hole?

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Alright then...
I'm back to post some more.
The rabbit hole was deep, but I persevered and either came out the other side or caught that rabbit and beat it into submission.... I'm leaning towards the later, but I'm quite unsure of this metaphor altogether.
After assembling the bike in mock up I thought it was cool, I liked it, but it was missing. I wanted to do more on this build , but I didn't want to just slap doodads on it to make it Cool or whatever...

I like chainguards and fenders. These frames never had those. I started just mocking up various guards and was not satisfied. Especially with the crank I'm using that already has the guard ring.
I have two chainguards that's completely shroud the chain, which I liked.
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I went with the second one because it didn't go as low on the front and would be easier to engineer a solution as to connecting it to the frame. I don't weld so I can't make some connector out of scrap and so on.
I was thinking what is a common object that goes in that area of a bike and Bing the solution started to form in my head.
I ran off to my LBS that has a lot of used parts bins and got a front derailer.
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I ended up cutting off all the excess derailing parts I didn't need, added a bolt to keep it steady and drlled a hole to secure it in the existing hole of the chainguard.
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Completely worked out, couldn't be happier with it...
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One down... now to figure out a rear fender.
 
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Great choice of clamp. I thought of using one to hold my cables, except that I could not find one to fit. Are you going to use some kind of p-clip for the rear?

The use of a chainguard and a guard ring is kinda slick, having all the practical benefits without losing the style on the chain ring.
 
when painting/fading... always go from light to dark... lay the gold first, then the purple. ample curing time in between. depending on how transparent the paint is you might get some green show up in the fade.

looks like the frame needs a dusting & primer. again, if the colors are even semi-transparent go with a white or a very light grey (almost white) primer to get the colors to be really bright.

PRIMER
CHOICE
MATTERS!

...sorry, had to
 
Cool idea using part of a front derailleur as the guard bracket.
 
when painting/fading... always go from light to dark... lay the gold first, then the purple. ample curing time in between. depending on how transparent the paint is you might get some green show up in the fade.

looks like the frame needs a dusting & primer. again, if the colors are even semi-transparent go with a white or a very light grey (almost white) primer to get the colors to be really bright.

PRIMER
CHOICE
MATTERS!

...sorry, had to

I'm going to paint Friday or Saturday, and yes I'm going to resand everything. It's been Hella humid here and everything was to bare metal for about a month.
Going white primer, then purple. I'm spraying black where the multi color is going.
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