A Lengthy Insanity

[Ulu]

Well it’s 100° again at lunchtime.

Time for a break.

I found an aluminum channel to serve a V-Block and I drilled the rivet holes.

It took a while to clean off all the paint and sanitize everything. The tubing had some rust inside so I brushed it out and phosphated it with Jasco prep and prime. I neutralized that with some washing soda and everything came out beautiful.

Until I started to weld . . . but first the set up.

Getting everything up straight and plumb in the jig and all lined out with fishing line, to make sure this thing wasn’t going to come out crooked. I hate a crooked or creaky sissy bar.

So far I have it close enough final adjustments will probably not be necessary.

It’s all tack welded now, so I can take it out of the jig to do the finish welding. Those holes will get stainless steel pop rivets. I’m going to embed the sissy bar in adhesive sealant. Wherever it ends up that’s where it’s gonna be.

Yikes! I slipped up and burned the corner from my gusset. I forgot about the chilling effect of the chrome tubing inside the assembly.

 

[Ulu]

I don’t know how I managed this. I was shooting for 63° exactly.

The brakeside:

Drive side:

Lord only knows how it will look after finish welding.

 

[Ulu]

Preliminary assembly was done very gingerly so as not to break any tack welds. The long welding rod is holding my chain together.

The wheels appears to be centered in the stays very well.

It appears that there is no problem with the clearance at the brake or the chain.





Chain line is a bit crooked but it is the same I have had, except now it will be several links longer.

I need to accommodate this tensioner.

I might lop off that lug and move it to a new location on the drop plate.

Now it must come apart for the final welding. The steel is all preheated for me, courtesy of global warming.

 

[Ulu]

Holy Frijoles! I should’ve done this in one hour.

After 2 hours of welding, I have put down at least twice as much wire as I should have.


Anyhow there is some obvious porosity but it is welded 100% from both sides so it should not crack. I gave it plenty of post flow argon so it could cool down.


I dipped the tungsten about a dozen times. I was really hot and sweat was just draining off of me.

Some of the welds look pretty ugly and I’m not going to show them to you until they get sanded down.

 

[Shrunken_Head_Pedaler]

Holy Frijoles! I should’ve done this in one hour.
View attachment 207731
After 2 hours of welding, I have put down at least twice as much wire as I should have.

View attachment 207730
Anyhow there is some obvious porosity but it is welded 100% from both sides so it should not crack. I gave it plenty of post flow argon so it could cool down.
View attachment 207729

I dipped the tungsten about a dozen times. I was really hot and sweat was just draining off of me.

Some of the welds look pretty ugly and I’m not going to show them to you until they get sanded down.

Loving this build. Just caught up! Bring it home

 

[Ulu]

Loving this build. Just caught up! Bring it home

Thank you SHP.

How the welding shed looks at night, without the welder.

How I feel about finishing:

Prep, paint & assembly are my 3 victims!

It’s been a long time since I did much more than very modest amounts electric welding. I have owned a torch most of my life. Anyhow I forgot that I was welding in a T-shirt and overalls.

I had big gauntlets so everything is covered up EXCEPT the inside of my elbows, which are both sunburnt AH this morning.

It’s only 6 AM and far too early to start grinding, but I think that most of the prep work will get done today and I might even get some epoxy filler on it.

I will probably etch-prime with Jasco then use self-priming paint, because of the drying time, but I don’t know how much sanding it will get between coats.

I might do something “experimental.” ie ratty, due to time constraints

I have about 10 different colors in spray bombs, including clear gloss. So who knows at this point what it will look like.

I want to just put it together and ride it but I still have to make brackets for the Sissy bar and trim it. There’s going to be blacksmithing involved so I must wait till a civilized time to make a racket.

 

[Ulu]

OK, the uncivilized racket I have been making for the past 90 minutes has been interspersed by a few necessary breaks. Otherwise it’s been relentless and merciless on my neighbors. But it’s 10am and it’s already 90°F, so they’ve all gone inside pretty much; and the only ones left outdoors to be annoyed are random gardeners & small pets.

Here you can see I got way too much weld on the backside. I should’ve chamfered the joint some more. I had a very minimal chamfer and a very thin gap.


So, I’m grinding and shaping.

I have 3/4 of the easiest part ground down. There’s gonna be some scars if I don’t put filler coats on. I had a few random strikes with both the welder and the grinder.

These plates are 3/16 and this is about the thickest metal that I’ve welded with the TIG welder. So far I’ve been practicing on sheet-metal because I’m going to weld my Volkswagen pan. But I did throw some subframe reinforcements under the runningboards of that car right after I bought this welder. I knew more what to expect from at this time and I did a better job.

I also blew through the light gauge tubing from the handlebars in two places, trying to fill up gaps where I had over slotted.

Of course I ended up filling holes. I’m actually getting good at filling holes. I wish I could get bad at making them.

 

[Ulu]

111°F in the boat yard and I am taking a break.

I’ve got the prep work about half done. This means that if I work all night, and all day Monday, I might be able to post photos by the deadline.

 

[Ulu]

All of the grinding and most rough sanding has been done. Now I have to do the hand sanding.

My wife tells me she used all my 220 sandpaper on a 4 dollar yard sale bench.

I hope she didn’t. That was the last of the hi tech 3M paper.

 

[Ulu]

Well it turns out I have lots of epoxy filler, but I don’t have any 220 sandpaper. I have some 320 but that’s just not gonna cut it with filler.

Foooo!

I did eight hours of grinding and sanding and burnishing today. My hands are sore from working the grinder, and the Dremel.

I spent at least four hours just with the Dremel.

I’m gonna do a minimal amount of sanding, & forget about doing any filler coats at all. Almost all the pits came out of the welding. I think it’s gonna look great with paint on it.

I’m going to put some epoxy putty in the sissy bar tubes to close them off, trim the sissy bar and rivet it in, mask it, do a clear phosphate etch primer, and shoot about 10 coats of Krylon on there tomorrow.

It looks like several things I wanted to do are not gonna get done, but it’s a race to the finish now, with less than 34 hours to go.

At this point the big things are paint and sissy bar assembly as I still have to build bracketry, and I could not find the material that I wanted. I have some nice tempered aluminum that might work out. I’ll have plenty of time to play with that while the paint is drying.

 

[GeePig]

Wow, this is going to be close to the wire!

 

[Ulu]

I have a heat gun so the paint won’t be sticky.

 

[kingfish254]

I really like the way the sissy bar base came out.
Keep plugging away man!! You got this!

 

[Ulu]

Well it’s going to roll and it’s going to ride but the paint may be a little crude.

 

[Ulu]

Well the sun is coming up. First photo of the day. Here’s where we stand:

The bike:


Me:

That’ll look even better once it’s covered with overspray.

 

[Ulu]

I have been filing and hand sanding for two hours and I’m starting to realize that I need two more days if it’s going to look decent.

It’s gonna look ratty.

 

[Ulu]

The mongoose dropouts were die stamped at the factory. The dies were not sharp. They probably got a tumble debur, but nobody took the flash off the edge.

Anyhow I’m trying to clean up that stuff too.

 

[Ulu]

The humidity here is unusual. But the sun is coming up hot and it’s going to burn off. Until then I can’t paint however I still have lots of sanding and I’m going to put the filler on such as it is.

 

[Ulu]

It is 12:30 and 106°F. The humidity is burning off slowly and it promises to be 112 today. Serious paint baking temperature. If I sit that bike in the sun for 10 minutes it will be 150°.

At some point I had to make a value judgment. Paint was optional . . . every bit of it. Somewhere along the line I started feathering in the stuff that I was Not going to paint on this bike.

Foofafooie. I couldn’t get the sealer on until I fitted the sissy bar.

This is the 12th sissy bar fitting, or thereabouts. I did a lot of honing inside those tubes to get it to fit in.

The sissy bar itself is not perfectly symmetrical so there was some fudging there. Basically I trimmed over 3 inches off of it.

Fits pretty good now.

Absolutely straight* and the lean back angle is almost equal.

* my measurements determine that the mongoose neck post is out of alignment with the seat post by 4/10 of a degree. I went by the neck post when I did my alignments but it’s very short so, ehhh…

 

[Ulu]

I almost disassembled dad’s old right angle drill attachment to make a front shifter. I’m glad I just took off the extra sprocket and forgot about the idea because I could not have drilled these holes without it.



Will he die of heat stroke or succumb to the paint fumes? Stay tuned.…