Hope4muscle - born in Japan growing muscle in Berlin 😉

[SwissGuy]

Hello Folks!
This time I'll build a bike for my son. After he saw what I did last year with the trike he also wanted a bike with an ape hanger and so I promised him to reconfigure his campground ride into a cool muscle bike.
And I intend to keep that promise!
Here's the pic of his bike I shot last autumn:

The starting pIoint is very promising and I already have collected a banana seat and a ape hanger bar so far.
As I still have a lot of work to do on my shed and won't be on the campground for another four weeks at last, please be patient, there won't be a lot of updates before mid June...

 

[kingfish254]

That will make a cool muscle bike for him. It has a killer shifter console.

 

[SwissGuy]

That will make a cool muscle bike for him. It has a killer shifter console.

That shifter was the main reason I bought that bike about three years ago...

 

[SwissGuy]

Another piece of the puzzle:
Banana seat and backrest:

Yes, they'll need some serious overhaul but they'll do just fine.

 

[OddJob]

Muscle bike mods on a 26er = Cool! Welcome back to the annual Build Off @SwissGuy , looking forward to your creative ideas!

RaT oN~!

 

[SwissGuy]

Muscle bike mods on a 26er = Cool! Welcome back to the annual Build Off @SwissGuy , looking forward to your creative ideas!

RaT oN~!

Actually it's 20, but I thought about squeezin in a 24 or even 26 in the back...

I still have those dropout extensions I made for my BO11 BarrelBanana Lowrider (see quote below). With those at least 24 should be in range...

Made some more progress today:
At work I had time for the finetuning of the dropouts. Now they fit like a glove!
Here with the intended hub:

And here with the mockup rearwheel:

I think this part of the bike I can call done now...

 

[MattiThundrrr]

That bike looks so 26. This is gonna be cool.

 

[SwissGuy]

That bike looks so 26. This is gonna be cool.

It has those odd 451 rims that still count as 20'. Maybe that's why it looks like a 26'

 

[SwissGuy]

I think that somewhere in my basement storage I might still have that sissy bar I made from a CD-stand for the BarrelBanana Lowrider back then (sans the wooden seat)...

After a good nights sleep I made up my mind an went for cd stand option (I still can add on the stave if I feel the need to do it).
Thats how it looks now (I will fit it to the bike tonight):

Fixation of the lower ends:

Under the seat (I notched it in a bit):

An at the backrest:

Seat and Sissy bar are mounted. It feels very sturdy and the lines flow nice:

Today I also got rid of the long crank arms. With the shorter ones I will have probably 2-3 cm of ground clearance...

Next issue to adress: cutting the threads on the fork shaft further down.

(and of course lacing the back wheel)

At least this would be an option if I don't find an original one...

 

[Frankie plekhand]

Great start, muscle bikes are always cool!

 

[SwissGuy]

Today I checked in the basement and my old makeshift sissy bar is still there. I also dug out the ape hanger:

And also today I bought a used bike Workstand from a friend (my old one gave up on me a while ago):

 

[SwissGuy]

Doing research on bicycles sometimes sends you down some very weird wormholes...
As you know I will try to transform a vintage kids bike into my own version of a musclebike. From the same person that I got the workstand, I also got an adress of a workshop where I could get a bike and fork sandblasted and powdercoated for 65.- € which I consider a very fair price. So I thought about getting the bike powdercoated (a first for me) but immediatly felt sorry for the nice decals. So the next thought was; that mybe somewhere in the interwebs I could find the graphics to make my own decals without spending to much time doing designwork on the PC. So I consulted a well know search enging with the terms: "hope sports 6 speed" An here's where I landed:

https://store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp/cycleparadise/cpt-2005099103-bi-037637570.html
(you will probably need to fire up your trusted VPN and pretend that your in Japan, otherwise the site won't work...)
Someone was gonna sell the same bike for 21,890 Yen, but men, look at that chainguard: pure 70's insanity!

On the site with the search results of an image search several other wacky bikes caught my eye.... here we go wormhole...

According to the following site my kids bike was part of a big fuzz in Japan during the 70's and 80's, roughly translated as "bicycles with flashers":

https://middle-edge.jp/articles/I000192
This article explains the history of the trend:

https://middle-edge.jp/articles/t5MZK

It's really worth it to run both articles through a translation tool! Japanese seventies bike galore!
Here are a few videos I found on youtube about those bikes. It's getting pretty clear where the name of this trend came from...










(I think my bike is featured in this clip from 0:33 on, at least the rear rack seems to be the same...)

Have fun in the japanese 70's bike culture wormhole...

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Swiss guy in need of new name?

 

[SwissGuy]

Swiss guy in need of new name?

Just edited the thread name...

 

[SwissGuy]

I'm still caught in the Japanese 70's bike culture wormhole...
This video shows I real "nice" addon, that would be very helpful sometimes cruisin the streets of Berlin holding of those tincanidiots overtaking way to close....
(The link fires up the video at minute 3, but also the rest is well worth watching to get some creative gears spinnin)

 

[SwissGuy]

The whole japanes thing makes me want to build up the front end as original as possible (plus ape) and tweak the rear in classic muscle bike style, maybe with some classic indicators just for the fun of it. So I just searched the bay for double headlights, just to realize that lights plus shipping are way out of range of what I intend to spend for this build...
So the next few weeks I'll go hunting for some vintag squarish european headlights instead... Soubitez or Union made some nice ones and if I can find two of the same product, they will do fine. We will see...

 

[SwissGuy]

Hi guys, it's been a while since I've updated this thread, as there was nothing to tell...
But this weekend I'll be on the campground and I brought work in form of a donour bike:

The disassembly gave me some nice old parts for my stash and a derailleur that might work better than the original one. I also went through my boxes and pulled out what I think I could use for the little muscle bike. Here's what I got so far:

The pedals probably won't make it, as one axle is bent.
I'll also have to look for a BB replacement

And another headset

Seatpost has to go as well

I really like the the way they guided the cables. I will keep that

And I found a manufacturer sticker with a serial number:

So this is a Nakamura!

 

[SwissGuy]

Might have found a replacement for the BB and there should be something usable for the headset in here as well...

I'll probably use this GDR breaklevers from the donour bike instead of the Japanese Plastik junk...

 

[SwissGuy]

Managed to piece a halfway decent cockpit together. And yes, it will get some polish/cleaning later on.

Now I'll have to follow the rest of the family to the local beach, so no wrenching time. Maybe I'll get a chance to exchange the derailleur later as it's completely shot now, but we will see what the kids plan is for the rest of the day...

 

[SwissGuy]

The last 12 hours I was very busy, but not really on the bike. Yesterday evening we wanted to have a little barbecue (only some sausages) but almost instantly after lighting up the fire we were told that it is forbidden due to danger of forrest fires (the forrest starts directly behind the campground), so I took out the electro grill, only to almost instantly blow the main fuse for several caravans. I started to search for the reason, but, to make a long story short, to no avail besides wasted time. So sausages into the pan, unplug any unessesary devices. Luckyly the fuse held (for now).
So after dinner, when the kids went to sleep (in the tent), I finally started working on the bike, or better said on the workstand. The clamp for the front axle was far to wide for the kids bike, so it needed some ratrodding:

Then I started to take apart the rear end to check if adding a larger wheel was doable. Let's put it like this: 24' would be possible, but it would look really bulcky and ugly:

So I put it all back together and tried my luck on the derailleur. I could make it work once, out of endless tries and finally destroyed it. The little bearing ball that slotted into the positioning rail jumped out and got lost in the dirt.

After that I wanted to settle for a good nights sleep, but luck wasnt on my side, as the fuse blew again, and again, and again, ... After a lot of trial (un-, re- Plugging devices and cables) and error (blown fuse), I just gave up... (it was past midnight already)
So this was yesterday...