Nothing terribly exciting, as I'm planning to take this bike back to a relatively original state, but thought I'd post some pics. I got the itch to own a bicycle after getting my 3-year-old a bike for Christmas. A few weeks ago I bought my wife a big-box Huffy cruiser, and then started thinking about the kind of bike I wanted. Being an engineer by trade and a tinkerer at heart, I could not bring myself to own just any ordinary bicycle. The Swingbike was about the most outlandish thing with two wheels and a set of pedals I had ever heard of, so I had to have one. This is probably my first bicycle in 20 years, and my first time building/restoring one. For what looks like such a simple craft on the surface, there are lots of details and terminology to bicycles...I'm still learning a lot!
Anyhow, I initially thought I would build one after reading this. I bought a rear-triangle from the 2003 run on eBay and started trying to reverse engineer the "swing frame" from pictures I found on the web. I bought a bike to sacrifice for the head tube, was looking for a second, and had a guy with a tubing roller lined up to bend me some cross tubes. Then I found a Swingbike on eBay and decided to just buy that and restore it. I'm not yet sure what I'll do with the rear triangle and extra bike parts I have. Anyhow, onto the pictures.
Here is a picture of the model I made of the "swing frame". All measurements were taken from a few internet pictures and averaged. I'm curious to measure the real thing and see how close I was.
Here is the bike I was going to chop up and use. It's a 1979 Schwinn Collegiate 3 I got on CL. The angle of the cross tubes and the head tube looked like it would work good as the front headset on the Swingbike. Not sure what I'll do with it now.
Here is the Swingbike I bought on eBay, just after unboxing it.
And here it is assembled. The tires were so dry-rotten I blew the rear trying to ride it around. It was originally blue, and then someone painted over it a lighter blue. Rusty chrome, wrong parts everywhere, missing parts...it truly is a project!
I got it taken all apart this weekend and dropped the frame off at the powdercoat shop this morning. It's going to be yellow when I get it back.
Lots of parts still rolling in through the mail for this build. Looking forward to getting it completed and turning some heads when I ride around downtown Chatt this spring and summer!
Anyhow, I initially thought I would build one after reading this. I bought a rear-triangle from the 2003 run on eBay and started trying to reverse engineer the "swing frame" from pictures I found on the web. I bought a bike to sacrifice for the head tube, was looking for a second, and had a guy with a tubing roller lined up to bend me some cross tubes. Then I found a Swingbike on eBay and decided to just buy that and restore it. I'm not yet sure what I'll do with the rear triangle and extra bike parts I have. Anyhow, onto the pictures.
Here is a picture of the model I made of the "swing frame". All measurements were taken from a few internet pictures and averaged. I'm curious to measure the real thing and see how close I was.
Here is the bike I was going to chop up and use. It's a 1979 Schwinn Collegiate 3 I got on CL. The angle of the cross tubes and the head tube looked like it would work good as the front headset on the Swingbike. Not sure what I'll do with it now.
Here is the Swingbike I bought on eBay, just after unboxing it.
And here it is assembled. The tires were so dry-rotten I blew the rear trying to ride it around. It was originally blue, and then someone painted over it a lighter blue. Rusty chrome, wrong parts everywhere, missing parts...it truly is a project!
I got it taken all apart this weekend and dropped the frame off at the powdercoat shop this morning. It's going to be yellow when I get it back.
Lots of parts still rolling in through the mail for this build. Looking forward to getting it completed and turning some heads when I ride around downtown Chatt this spring and summer!
