Re: "GULF SWING" Cutting, Grinding, Welding at last!
Started work on the bike for real today!
First up was the main frame section, spent some time getting the angles exactly as per the original swingbikes and the top tube length to scale. (Original has a twenty inch rear tire measuring out at 490mm, my tire is 645mm or 131% of the original size, applied 131% to the top tube and made it correct, turned out exactly half of the lengths of tube I had curved, so plenty left for another!)
A little cutting and notching later:
You can see on the board how much longer it is than my original mock-up! :shock:
A quick mock with wheels showed me that my 26x1.25 front just looked out of place now, so changed it to this: "Say hello to my little friend!"
The 16" I found back at the start! Of course now I had another issue, do I extend the fork legs or extend the headtube? A quick mock up digitally showed me that an extended headtube just looked funny, and the long fork legs did not look right either, so came up with another solution. First welded some stem tube sized pipe into the top of the forks:
Then covered the whole lot with some mountain bike top tube and welded both the pipe and tube to the other fork top:
Much better looking, and will look even better with the little truss rods I have planned for them.
So of course, now it is time for another full mock-up to give an idea of how it will look when done:
Very happy with the progress today, glad I matched up the angles to the original bikes, should give it the best chance of working the way it is intended... Would have done more today but ran out of grinding discs and wanted to pick up the 6mm (1/4") rod for the truss rods while the shop was still open.
More soon...
Luke.
