The stretched Penny

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Paul's (Uncle Stretch) wife Betty decided that he had done enough guys bikes and so she wanted him to build her a strecth bike of her own.

He bought a chopper / low rider frame and parts a while back - mainly to get the triple tree fork off of it to use on another of his bikes. So he was left with this frame and decided to try to use that in the build.

It was designed for a long fork tube because the neck was raked quite a bit.

IMG_1674.jpg




Paul got a 24" girl's frame from our older brother, Mike, who found it at the dump and dragged it home for Paul to use for parts. The 24" fork needed to be extended to run 26" tires, so Paul figured while he was stretching it he might as well do it right. Here's how he began lengthening it.

fk1.jpg


The he began cutting and mocking up parts on the jig to see how the new bike was going to look.

GB2.jpg


GB3.jpg



Some additional layout work was done using the extended fork.

FTEND1.jpg


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bb3.jpg



He later decided to add some additional braces to help strengthen the frame a bit more.

BB13.jpg


BB12.jpg


BB14.jpg



Next came the paint - which is how it got it's name of Penny.

P1.jpg



Followed by the initial mock up to see what is was going to look like.

DARK1.jpg



And here is the finished bike.

pny1.jpg


pny2.jpg



And for all of you video lovers, here's a video clip of Paul on Penny ...

 
That one looks sweet RRDAD! Can't belive he chopped up such a nice frame to start with!(the blue one) Love the final bike though! We gotta talk spec's for a 26"x3"wheeled streched ride! :wink:
L8 EM
 
LOOKS GREAT! Looks very comfortable too.
 
Paul said the paint was Krylon Copper - sprayed over a white primer base coat.

The problem with the blue frame was that it had a super long neck on it. Here is one version of how it could have looked if done stock.

Chopperbike.jpg



An initial thought was to use the frame for the new bike and just shorten the neck and rerun a tube to the shorter neck, but then it would still need to be stretched and it would have been just as much work doing that plus the extra work of shortening the neck.

He originally used the triple tree front end that came off of the blue frame on his orange bike - and that took shortening the legs and redoing the neck tube so it would fit a shorter neck.

oj8.jpg


The other interesting thing was the 24" girls mountain bike. Paul found that the straight handlebars that came on it were a size that would fit snuggly inside the fork tubes, so he used them to extend the forks and then slid another piece of larger tubing over them to keep the fork the same size all the way down.

So one more in the bag and who knows what's next.

My suggestion is to stretch a mountain bike, toss the front derailer, and turn it into a stretched 5 or 6 speed with a single rear derailer on it. There seems to be an endless supply of fairly cheap old mountain bikes around - many with alloy wheels (aka - no rust). So we'll see what pops up on the jig next.
 
This one is for Hugo ....

I forgot to mention that Paul bought that chopper frame with the front end on it, a seat on it, and a new crank, sprocket, and chrome pedals - for $50 at one of the local flea markets. He bought it just for the parts and didn't care about the frame itself.

Later we looked it up online and places were selling the frame for $50 on up to $80 and the triple tree fork for around $90 so with those two parts plus the seat, crank, sprocket, pedals, etc., he thought he got a heck of a deal on it.
 
That is just the coolest. That's it my next present is welding classes.

Aaron
 
One more thing. Paul said that if you spray clear over that copper color it turns to more of a brown looking color instead of the bright copper.

So if you use that color and are considering using clear over it you might paint some other metal first, put the clear on it, and be sure you like the results before you spray your bike.
 
well done. i have always thought that frame had some sort of possibilities. i dig the color too
 
mastershake916 said:
What the heck, the original frame was ugly anyways, and not really rare or anything. :D
EDIT: I mean looks great now.
Before I edited it, it said "looks like now", which would be kind of insulting, which was not my intention at all.
 
cool chopper, if i may use the "c" word here.

never seen one of those frames (the blue one) look anything but ugly, til now.


"uncle stretch", i like that, has he now been perminantly renamed. :lol:
 
If you ask me thats the nicest one he's built yet. =] SHARP!!!
 

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