Leftover Bits Build

[Ulu]

(Since all this junk somehow fit together I decided to enter it in the build off.)

All of the stuff was clogging up my welding shed and I needed to turn it into something I could move easily.

I had this frame from a brand-new Chinese Walmart Fake Huffy girls mountain bike. Here I am heating it up with a heat gun to take off all the stickers.

Since I converted this from a seven speed to a coaster brake bike, I cut off the rear brake mounts. I also narrowed the rear drop outs by cold bending the stays. I used the forks from the centurion bicycle.

It is still in pretty nice shape. It doesn’t match anything else that I attached to it but that’s what happens when you build things out of leftovers.

Front wheel is from the huffy but with a street tire instead of a knobby. The rear is a knobby from the 16 inch girls LOL Surprise bicycle. So are the handlebars but I changed the grips to the Frozen princess bike grips. I probably spent more time scrubbing those grips than anything else on the bike.

The rear wheel & hub were both completely stripped, straightened, re-laced, and it works ok. So far…On the rack.

It also got a sealed bearing bottom end. The pedals, arms and front sprocket are all new, from the Huffy; but the bearings were awful and I could not stand them.

It got a brand-new chain. I had to shorten the kickstand.

I had to make a top steering bearing race from a 1” threaded race, and I cut a spacer tube of EMT, to take up the long steering stem.

I want to test ride this but, so far it’s not a functional bicycle. The 170 crank arms are too long.

I may both lengthen the forks and shorten the arms. But it rolls, and so it’s in the garage and out of my shed.

 

[Ulu]

I did a test ride today, and of course I got two pedal strikes. But the handling was fabulous.

 

[Ulu]

I haven’t shortened the pedal cranks yet, and I am planning to convert this from 9/16” to 1/2” pedals, because I have a brand-new-old-stock set of white ones. They’ve been kicking around in my shop for 25 years.

I did get to the bicycle shop yesterday, and I got 4 NOS whitewalls, including this front one for the Leftover Bits bike.

 

[Ulu]

Since all this junk somehow fit together, I decided to enter it in the MB build off. It still needs lots of finishing work, but there it is so far.

 

[Ulu]

This has a no name coaster brake that appears to be a clone of a Hi-stop (if that makes any sense, because the hi-stop is certainly a clone of some Bendix.)

Anyhow, you can see that the rear wheel had a dent in it, so I took it all apart and straightened it, buffed it out and shot it with clearcoat.

 

[Ulu]

The front wheel was about in the same shape with rust and ugly pink spokes. All that paint stripped right off in the hot sun after I poured used brake fluid on it. Somehow I did not keep a picture of the rear wheel, and this is not the front wheel currently on the bike.

 

[Ulu]

I put the hoop in a plastic bag with brake fluid. Of course if you read my paint stripping thread he would know that I did this wheel last summer. It was 100° out which makes the stripping go fast.

It took a couple days to get it that clean, but the paint all just scrubbed off with a toothbrush easily once the brake fluid had emulsified it.

Be warned that this method does not work well on all paint. It barely touched the black paint on the stinkray forks.

 

[Ulu]

So looking back, the rear wheel is polished & clear-coated steel, while the front wheel is anodized aluminum alloy.

Here’s the irony of the situation. I bought that brand new Huffy bike at Target (marked down from $159 to $75 because it had a minor flaw.)

I did that just because I wanted the front wheel, for a different bike, and it ended up right back on the Huffy anyhow.

 

[GeePig]

I find the pink handlebars looking annoyingly good, because every time you see them you know they were painted that way for a girl's bike, without asking the girl whether it is what they like... My wife says that, since girls things are done in that pink, that you are off them all the time.

And yet that pink could be a fantastic tool in corrupting its dreary use in little girl's things.

On other things, I love the spacer you have used to fit the longer fork stem, it is one of those things that I also have been pondering since I have to make the decision soon between which frame I should use. The fork I have chosen fits one frame, but the other needs some kind of extension kit to fit the fork.

 

[Ulu]

The 1” ID EMT fits very well over the 1 inch diameter fork stem from the Centurion.

The only hard bit is I don’t own a lathe, and I used a drill press and a stone to remove the threads from a threaded top cone, and make it fit exactly to my stem. It’s a tedious process but it’s not difficult. You just have to stop and let your fingers cool off every now and then lol. I probably went around that circle 800 times with the Grindstone.

Those pink bars are from the “LOL Surprise” bike, Which certainly came from China by way of Walmart. I put them on there because I didn’t have a regular stem.

To make this work I have to put some bright red and bright yellow on the bike and then it will be the “Rainbow Surprise” bicycle LOL.

I still have the chain guard, which was in really nice shape, with just minor chips in the decal.

 

[GeePig]

Well, you could cut that into a circle to remove '#glamlife', trim some of the enclosure away from behind there, and you might have something cutting edge.

Or just cut the label part back to a circle and apply a dark colour to the visible plastic parts.

Or something like that...

 

[Ulu]

That was sort of a joke. I usually just toss chainguards.

This will get its own thread soon. I am now setting up a third bike for the BBO. We will see how far I get on the finishing of any of the 3.

The aluminum Trek BMX frame:

It’s been raining on the boatyard, and I am working outside under a big tarp and curtains.

It’s over 20’x40’ but right now it has 3 project cars, utility trailer, and my boat on it. Tools, saws, welding table, work benches, stock rack, and bike jig.

I hope to have one of the cars going by Christmas. That will clear some space to work on the others.

 

[GeePig]

I have 5 bicycles in my small warsztat.

I moved two of them to the other end to see the front wheel of another bike to decide how to build my 28 spoke wheel.

It feels 'comfortable'.

 

[Ulu]

I feel crowded. I own too much stuff. I can’t keep after it all.

My shed is only 8’ x 12’ It’s too full of tools and parts to do much work in there.

My garage is 22’ x 24’ but it’s full of cars and bikes etc, and all I can do in there is assembly work and minor machine work.

All the serious work is done outdoors, but this is Central California, and normally the weather is good. But the truth is that this rain is more important than my bicycles.

 

[Ulu]

The fake Schwinn and the fake Huffy swapped arms today. So no more pedal strikes for the Huffy, having gone from 170 to 140mm arms. It also gained two teeth on the sprocket going from 36 to 38.

I got rid of the beige grips on the huffy and put on some white sparkle grips.