This is one of my hats, and I'd like to 'officially' toss it into the BB07.
Now, my machining skills are infantile compared to what I am seeing on this site (which is what inspired me to personalize my bike in the first place), but I had a pretty clear vision of the direction I wanted to go from the beginning.
My daughters (ahem, WIFE) got me this bike from Walmart for my birthday last year, it's an OP Roller model. I saw one in Reno, and the wife KNEW I had found the bike I wanted
.
It barely made it out of the box before I started to play around with it, LOL!
I futzed around with it pretty much the same for a little over a year...had a few other 'projects'...got married, moved into a new home, etc, etc...
This is pretty much what I ended up with...
And of course, it morphed a little along the way in the way of a new seat...and what cruiser is complete without a bell?!?!
I had to put a gratuitous pic of my wife's bike in here too.
Then I saw the BB07 announcement, and it inspired me to at least play around with my scoot...I had zero plans of entering (at best, I wanted to just show my bike at the Sacramento cyclefest next Sunday), but after all of the kind words and a little nudge from Kingfish, I thought what the heck? I've got nothing to lose!
I've always been a fan of hot rods/ cafe racers/ board trackers...and my build is a clean minimalist take on those genres.
It all really snowballed when I got my Huffy Cranbrook from Walmart a few weeks ago...
Then I started the destruction, errrr I mean the deconstruction process...
I really liked the bones of the bike, just wanted to switch it up a little...
Next was the amassing of a small amount of parts to tweak the overall look of the bike...And then the rebuild process! Inthoug that it went pretty smoothly overall. I had a lifting issue witht the paint on my chopper forks...but finally got it resolved only to scratch the crap out of them during reassembly. Lesson learned (paint them as a unit, retard!). I picked up a Stingray chopper bike, because I was having a helluva time finding a 24 inch wheelset (asides from just buying one). Was going to use the front wheel off of it on my bike, but in the end decided to go 24x3 rear and 26x2.125 front.
Here's the fork tube that was giving me all of the trouble...
Couple of possible front wheels that I was gonna use...didn't like the straight spoke pattern on the schwinn wheel, and the steel wheel has a crowned center, which didn't match the weinmann that I had actually bought for the rear.
Actually fitted a Thick Brick on the stingray wheel and put it on the bike...
This is the wheelset I ended up using. The factory front, and a 24 inch rear...both wrapped in Felt Thick/Quick Brick goodness!
Here's some shots of the frame and bits & pieces as I was painting them...
Then final clearing, sanding and polishing of the frameset.
Then the mock up process started, so that I could make the final decision on some of the items...
Got some cool Felt lock on MTB grips to complete the look... As well as a "vintage" quilted BMX springer seat...
Another mock up...this time with the bars in place (and cool grips).
Didn't really like how the seat sat on the post...so I chopped about an inch off of the frame.
Got to give my Pops some props for this idea, I was about to mask the top tube and dropouts off, and he chimed in with this gem of an idea.. Says its how they used to make gaskets back in the day!
More to come...bunch of little stuff. It's all in the details, they say!
Now, my machining skills are infantile compared to what I am seeing on this site (which is what inspired me to personalize my bike in the first place), but I had a pretty clear vision of the direction I wanted to go from the beginning.
My daughters (ahem, WIFE) got me this bike from Walmart for my birthday last year, it's an OP Roller model. I saw one in Reno, and the wife KNEW I had found the bike I wanted
.
It barely made it out of the box before I started to play around with it, LOL!
I futzed around with it pretty much the same for a little over a year...had a few other 'projects'...got married, moved into a new home, etc, etc...
This is pretty much what I ended up with...
And of course, it morphed a little along the way in the way of a new seat...and what cruiser is complete without a bell?!?!
I had to put a gratuitous pic of my wife's bike in here too.
Then I saw the BB07 announcement, and it inspired me to at least play around with my scoot...I had zero plans of entering (at best, I wanted to just show my bike at the Sacramento cyclefest next Sunday), but after all of the kind words and a little nudge from Kingfish, I thought what the heck? I've got nothing to lose!
I've always been a fan of hot rods/ cafe racers/ board trackers...and my build is a clean minimalist take on those genres.
It all really snowballed when I got my Huffy Cranbrook from Walmart a few weeks ago...
Then I started the destruction, errrr I mean the deconstruction process...
I really liked the bones of the bike, just wanted to switch it up a little...
Next was the amassing of a small amount of parts to tweak the overall look of the bike...And then the rebuild process! Inthoug that it went pretty smoothly overall. I had a lifting issue witht the paint on my chopper forks...but finally got it resolved only to scratch the crap out of them during reassembly. Lesson learned (paint them as a unit, retard!). I picked up a Stingray chopper bike, because I was having a helluva time finding a 24 inch wheelset (asides from just buying one). Was going to use the front wheel off of it on my bike, but in the end decided to go 24x3 rear and 26x2.125 front.
Here's the fork tube that was giving me all of the trouble...
Couple of possible front wheels that I was gonna use...didn't like the straight spoke pattern on the schwinn wheel, and the steel wheel has a crowned center, which didn't match the weinmann that I had actually bought for the rear
.
Actually fitted a Thick Brick on the stingray wheel and put it on the bike...
This is the wheelset I ended up using. The factory front, and a 24 inch rear...both wrapped in Felt Thick/Quick Brick goodness!
Here's some shots of the frame and bits & pieces as I was painting them...
Then final clearing, sanding and polishing of the frameset.
Then the mock up process started, so that I could make the final decision on some of the items...
Got some cool Felt lock on MTB grips to complete the look... As well as a "vintage" quilted BMX springer seat...
Another mock up...this time with the bars in place (and cool grips).
Didn't really like how the seat sat on the post...so I chopped about an inch off of the frame.
Got to give my Pops some props for this idea, I was about to mask the top tube and dropouts off, and he chimed in with this gem of an idea.. Says its how they used to make gaskets back in the day!
More to come...bunch of little stuff. It's all in the details, they say!
