Finally got the bones to start my first REAL rat bike project, moving up from the 20" Stingrat stuff. Thanks to GTCOMA for the trade:
It's a 1992 Murray Westport, which seems essentially the same as the Monterey. I've been putting stuff aside for this as I came across it... here's a few pieces that may be on the finished product:
Of course, when it showed up on the front porch today, I couldn't just drag it to the basement and let it sit... I had to start bolting stuff on. This is a VERY preliminary mock-up... nothing has even been cleaned, just stuck together to see if these parts would actually work:
Those horrible wheels and tires are the only 26s I have around without scavenging my mountain bike, my wife's mountain bike, or the '41 Firestone Pilot I have here. That's a 3-speed hub, at the moment this thing has NO BRAKES (and no chain anyway so it doesn't really matter). Hopefully I can find a donor 24" mountain bike soon to use the wheels to get these bad boys mounted up:
My goal is to eventually get this to look like a Spaceliner-type tank/light bike, either finding an old tank or making/faking one and putting a rack on it. My main inspiration was ponytailmike's immensely cool Higgins/Murray Super Deluxe. I have no idea which way the drivetrain on this bike will go... I have a complete 10-speed front freewheel system waiting to be robbed off a functioning Ross Europa, but then brakes will be a problem. The easy solution is a 3-speed coaster, but that's expen$ive and I don't want to give up on hand brakes yet. I have 2 ideas for getting around this... one involves these big V-brake conversion plates that get clamped to the frame and forks, and the other is this set of crazy long-reach sidepull brakes called Odyssey 1999s that look like they just might reach around a 24x3 if I can make up drop bolts a la Sheldon Brown's site...
--rick
It's a 1992 Murray Westport, which seems essentially the same as the Monterey. I've been putting stuff aside for this as I came across it... here's a few pieces that may be on the finished product:
Of course, when it showed up on the front porch today, I couldn't just drag it to the basement and let it sit... I had to start bolting stuff on. This is a VERY preliminary mock-up... nothing has even been cleaned, just stuck together to see if these parts would actually work:
Those horrible wheels and tires are the only 26s I have around without scavenging my mountain bike, my wife's mountain bike, or the '41 Firestone Pilot I have here. That's a 3-speed hub, at the moment this thing has NO BRAKES (and no chain anyway so it doesn't really matter). Hopefully I can find a donor 24" mountain bike soon to use the wheels to get these bad boys mounted up:
My goal is to eventually get this to look like a Spaceliner-type tank/light bike, either finding an old tank or making/faking one and putting a rack on it. My main inspiration was ponytailmike's immensely cool Higgins/Murray Super Deluxe. I have no idea which way the drivetrain on this bike will go... I have a complete 10-speed front freewheel system waiting to be robbed off a functioning Ross Europa, but then brakes will be a problem. The easy solution is a 3-speed coaster, but that's expen$ive and I don't want to give up on hand brakes yet. I have 2 ideas for getting around this... one involves these big V-brake conversion plates that get clamped to the frame and forks, and the other is this set of crazy long-reach sidepull brakes called Odyssey 1999s that look like they just might reach around a 24x3 if I can make up drop bolts a la Sheldon Brown's site...
--rick
