Photographer dude need bike dudes advice

Bike Wall
shop deals on amazon
BOXKARS
Advertise with us
Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum

Help Support Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Johnthephotographer

Johnthephotographer

Joined
Jun 20, 2013
Messages
26
Reaction score
0
Location
Houston Texas
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
So like most well adjusted humans I have been riding bikes on and off for as long as I can remember. I sold off my standard issue MTB and thought HEY! A beach cruiser would be cool, I don't do anything but cruise around the neighborhood anymore anyway..
so I bought this...

Cruiser build by BigJohnsPhotography, on Flickr
I was in hog heaven for a day.. and decided HEY! I need some ape hangers, I felt a little cramped. I got them in, put them on, and I dont think I even made it around the block before this happend...
9106476561_1a79596885.jpg


Yeah I rode my fun new toy for a mere 3 days before it somehow... fell apart. This is when I realized I should have bought a cheaper bike since I am redoing the whole silly thing anyway.. oh well live and learn. The next weekend I hired some stripper..
9106473219_67f3a7df45.jpg


Been pretty interesting, Ive never taken a bike apart before and its a nice departure from cars. I was a mechanic in a former life and the simplicity and low death factor if something goes wrong has me pretty excited. So after spending a few days going back and forth on wanting a springer fork and if I wanted the lowrider bent version I got a super high dollar fancy job from ebay for a ripe 44 bucks.

9108696190_f1c0734396.jpg


I had planned on just painting it back a satin black, and I was going to be all fancy pants, I bought primer, the color and even a clear! But then I found this website and heck now im stuck since I now want to do more mods to the frame before I paint it. I even bought a welder from harbor freight!

My first foray into welding something for the bike, I cut the seat post and welded it at a better angle to get the seat back, and (not in the picture) welded a little support bracked on it since when I sat on the thing it bent straight away. Ill even include a picture of my fancy welding jig...
9108693472_e088352cff.jpg


My friend was over when I got it somewhat assembled and realized that the kick stand was way to long now that its lowered, so I cut the kick stand, threaded it and found an 8 ball drilled and tapped it and we have this! (fancy I know)
9106464111_6b4a82937b.jpg


Thats as far as I have gotten at this point, which leaves me here...
9106462941_0047780c52.jpg


now I have to figure out where to go next. I want to stretch the frame a little but I cant decide if I want to just do some new dropouts or try my hand at something else. Im searching for a spare bike to cut up and practice welding tubing and stuff at the moment.. I have a hard time finding bikes in disrepair, so if you have some tips for that let me know. I REALLY want to make a suicide brake but I havent figured out how I am going to pull that off yet.

so here we go!

oh and p.s. in the short period of time that my bike was apart (well before i bought a welder, decided what to do, etc) my wife got the bug. She sold her MTB, bought a beater cruiser to chop up and a kick ... pink and white schwinn with a springer to cruise while she builds her rat. So we have a full blown buildoff in our house!
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

wow your bike looks great, realy cool

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk 2
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

Makes sense to me! :wink:

:mrgreen:
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

I slapped it all together Saturday and took it for a spin after I made a bracket to hook up the little kiddo trailer. The ride is... Interesting to say the least.

I bought an old sears and Roebuck women's cruiser for the fenders, ad I hated the bobbed fenders on mine. I also was given 2 old mountain bikes that I am going to see if I can use to make new dropouts to stretch out the back some.

I keep going round and round with painting it. I set the crusty blue fenders on it from the sears bike and it really looked killer, so it might just stay un finished.

Other upshot the sears bike has a metal saddle so ill get to try my hand at recovering that.

I'll try and get some photos added when I get to a computer.
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

some piccies for your viewing pleasure.

Took the munchkin to the park for our first ride.
9124867521_893b2a77c4.jpg


my ridiculously over engineered bracket for the trailer. But hey! I saved 10 bucks!
9127082920_ac245839d6.jpg


and my sears bike that will be donating its fenders and seat and probably chain guard, possibly the head badge, maybe the crank sprocket... who knows!
9124872751_756dffe868.jpg
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

If your wanting to stretch a frame, that girls bike is a good candidate . If you do
a search there are lots of them here to give you ideas. Its a simple procedure and
the results are almost always nice... oh and cheap. :wink:
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

Uncle Stretch said:
If your wanting to stretch a frame, that girls bike is a good candidate . If you do
a search there are lots of them here to give you ideas. Its a simple procedure and
the results are almost always nice... oh and cheap. :wink:
Click to expand...

Thanks! Ive been searching and searching... and I keep coming up short. I have seen some ideas for new dropouts and thats what I was thinking of doing since it seems the easiest. I am thinking that I want to hack the girls bike up to pieces though, so ill continue the hunt! Thanks for the tip!
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

Not sure if this idea is good or not so I figured I would hunt yalls opinion... I want to stretch out the back of the bike and I have been toying with idea after idea to do it. I came up with this idea...
9144723600_b27547870b.jpg
[/url]

I was thinking if i cut off the dropouts on the original frame i can attach the chain stay of the doner right at the end of the original, tie in the seat stays about where they land at the brace and attempt to bend the original seat stays down to the new chain stay. Does all that make sense? ahahha

My neighbor thinks that if I do it this way the rear will be too busy and that i should not have the dual seat stays, but I am thinking that if I leave it and use the right amount of sheet metal and fancy pants style that I could mimic the beloved fins of the older cars.

My other concern is that this might make the bike too low but I think it may only lower the rear about an inch at the most and with the bent springer I am already pushing the need for a shorter crank.
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

I love the idea! Chop it up! :wink:

Maybe if you add the doner section like you mentioned it would lengthen the rear overall for the look you are going for.
Then if you chopped out 1-2 inches of the area on the top rear dropout ( directly behind the seat post ) and bent the lower drop out it would lower the rear of the bike lowrider style 8) . ( make sence ? )
kindda like " clocking " it from 12 to 10:30
 
Re: Photographer turned bike put-er together guy?

Ok, after days of crawfishin' around trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do...
I couldn't decide on just whacking apart another bike so I could ride this one, or hack this one up and hope for the best.. blah blah...

So I opted to grow a pair and hope that my cutting and welding would be up to snuff. ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Originally I wanted to chop off the rear drop outs and add in the new section, but I just could NOT bring myself to cut it. I figured at least this way I could still have a usable frame if everything went south. Hindsight Im not sold on if this was the best solution and might require extra work to not make it look ghetto fab, but this was less stressful on me. Heck it was stressful enough with my cuts not being great, melting through some of the donor stuff, attempting to fill in the gaps with weld ( :oops: )and praying that it will hold my weight...

9181924873_1a7616e4d8.jpg


So after spending an embarrassing amount of time welding, grinding, cussing, welding, grinding, panicking, welding, grind.... well you get the picture... I tossed on the rear wheel and coasted it up and down the bumps on the drive way. It didn't break immediately so I am hoping that it will be ok to cruise to the park and restaurants in the neighborhood. The "lines" of the seat stays arent as smooth as I was hoping but I don't think my donor section was quite long enough. Eh... I am hoping that I can strip the paint off the new section and perhaps it will look less "HEY LOOK AT THAT ADDED SECTION HAHAHAHA" or something. I dunno. Its also even lower, which I expected, but that "small" drop on the rear made a huge difference. Before I was scraping pedals if I wasn't careful, now I think I will have to get a shorter crank. Oh and Ill have to shorten my kickstand... AGAIN. And as luck would have it I am not loving the apes anymore which is disappointing as it was my first purchase.

9184125548_d82cfc7eb8.jpg


So tonight I am hoping to figure out how to add some length to my chain since I have some donor chain laying around. I have no experience with this (like everything else) so I am hoping to be able to use a punch and make it work. That or I have seen mention of chain tools around here so I might just see if I can pick one up at bike barn or something or hit amazon.

Then I need to figure out how to get the seat even farther back, I considered adding in another seat tube, but I may just make another seat post that lays back even more and just add in a support or something.

I want to make some fins to fill in that back area and do it much like I have seen others make those tanks that hang in the middle of the top bars.. but yeah... im a bit away from that.

OHHHH and I finally have a name for the bike... but ill reveal that later.
 
Photographer guy needs help from you bike guys!

Last night I put together a chain long enough to get to get to see how the bike feels.. and its low. I wish I had taken some photos. All the neighbors were interested in it and all took it for a spin some more graceful than others. Its not your mammas beach cruiser thats for sure scraping pedals all the way.

My problem (I think its a problem) is I have more flex than I had anticipated at the original drop out location. I dont notice any when riding straight (when I could stare at the area) but I think there may be some in turns and if you give the chain a good tug you can watch it bow out... so yeah. What in the world should I do? (EDIT- this is all welded together but this was the best picture at the moment I have to illustrate the area I am talking about)

1) cut out the drop out and maybe add in some tubing or something (not my first pick)
2) get some bar stock and cut a piece to weld over the drop out to try and add some rigidity to the area
3) bend the bottom portion of the drop out up to close it and weld it closed (im not sold this would add enough rigidity)


9184138562_bdf6177182.jpg


In hindsight I wish I had done it how I was going to do it originally because I think it would have been more rigid. Now I am kind of at a loss. Its nice because the coaster brake arm lines up perfectly with the original drop out so thats a happy accident there.
 
If it was me I would bite the bullet and cut out the original drop out. Then get some solid stock and use it to weld the parts together. Will look better in the long run and should strengthen it up.
 
Dont have a picture (GRRRRRR) but I scabbed in a little extra tubing for the old drop out. it doesnt look as pretty as some of yalls better built stuff, but it firmed it up enough for my liking. I might scab in some more later too, but i dont know, it was a lot of work for minimal return, plus my welding still leaves a lot to be desired so it leaves a lot of grinding, filing and uglyness left over.

I added some length to my layback seat post and am thinking I might have one built or now that I at least know what I need make one that isnt cobbled together from 6 different seat posts. At least I sit back far enough to get my legs nearly completely extended which has gotten rid of the knee pain I was having.

Now I am on to getting these fenders to work. Its becoming a source of frustration keeping it from rubbing tire tire though. :?
 
Loving this thread! Really enjoying the journey and watching someone get completely hooked on cutting up a perfectly good bike to see if they can maybe make it cooler! :mrgreen:

Grass roots ratrodding!

Thanks for sharing and loving your build! I hope your better half will post her build when she gets into it too!

Luke.
 
LukeTheJoker said:
Loving this thread! Really enjoying the journey and watching someone get completely hooked on cutting up a perfectly good bike to see if they can maybe make it cooler! :mrgreen:

Grass roots ratrodding!

Thanks for sharing and loving your build! I hope your better half will post her build when she gets into it too!

Luke.
Click to expand...

she just started stripping the frame on her other bike. I have a feeling shes going to paint it up and put it back together and see what it looks like. Its a toss up if its going to get sold or if shes going to keep it but I feel like its going to get sold to pay for more goodies for her "good" bike. :wink:
 

Latest posts

Back
Top