Newbie from SE Michigan

[DesmoDog]

Greetings,

New guy here. When I write intros on forums they're typically very short or very long... and I'm guessing this one will drone on so here we go.

In high school I started working as a mechanic in a Schwinn shop, and worked there for about ten years. Then I got a job in another industry, moved away from my home town, and became pretty heavily involved with a certain brand of motorcycles. I didn't touch a bicycle for ages after that. 30 some years later I retired, and now play around with bicycles again, a little anyway.

For a lot of years I had an idea in the back of my mind that I wanted to buy an old Schwinn Typhoon frame and build up a bike with a 3 speed hub and coaster brake, using more modern parts. What actually happened was I realized I could buy a new "Schwinn" that already had a lot of the mods I wanted to make, with the same style frame, for a lot less than building one. So I ordered one off Amazon, $200 delivered.

I had to rebuild the entire bike once it showed up, but I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out. Oh sure, there were a few details I wasn't too happy about, but for the price it was pretty decent.

Then I decided to upgrade the pedals and fender braces... and one thing led to another.

When I was done it had a Sturmey Archer 5 speed rear hub with drum brake and a few other mods. I had to keep a derailluer on it since the frame has vertical dropouts. I have a tensioner, but it didn't have the reach to work with the SA hub. I did replace the plastic derailleur with a more vintage part though.

Unpainted rims, QR front hub, stainless spokes, upgraded brake

I don't have any good pictures of the final product but here it is with most of the mods done. Pay no attention to the car behind it, that got sold (unfinished) before I retired to free up some space/time/money.

The bike is fun and rides better than it has any right to. The bummer is it's not a Chicago built Schwinn.

But that's not why I'm here.

Flash forward to a couple weeks ago when I stumbled onto a free Typhoon frame.

My first reaction was no thanks, I've got enough projects already. But the more I thought about it... dang. Had to have it.

So now I have a July '69 Typhoon frame sitting around. I've already found a chainguard and fork for it, both the righ tcolor with similar wear. The question is, how do I finish it?

And THAT'S why I'm here. There's not enough there to make it a feasible restoration project so anything goes. It will have some form of coaster brake hub but othe than that, I'm not sure. Right now I'm thinking I'll probably buy a complete bike with a girl's frame to get most of the parts I need cheap. And then add a 3 speed hub. Or maybe a 2 speed kickback hub?

Or maybe I'll find some other inspriation here. Time will tell. I'm guessing nothing will happen all that fast since I have other projects going on already, but there's my novella on who I am and why I'm here.

And now that I'm ready to post this it seems the site hosting my photos is down. It'll come back. The pics will show up eventually.

 

[Captain Awesome]

Welcome. You had me at Desmo

 

[MattiThundrrr]

That's a nice build, the SA 5 speed is a cool touch. Does it have internal brake as well, or will rim brakes be doing that job?

In high school I started working as a mechanic in a Schwinn shop, and worked there for about ten years.

That is interesting, you could have some useful info locked up in that brain box of yours!

So now I have a July '69 Typhoon frame sitting around. I've already found a chainguard and fork for it, both the righ tcolor with similar wear. The question is, how do I finish it?

Wait around a month or so, there's going to be a build contest with a muscle bike class, also an off road and skinny tire class. You can enter the typhoon, and get tons of inspiration and advice, or sit back and watch and see how things go down around here. Plenty of action to come

 

[DesmoDog]

Oh man, a build contest.

Cue flashbacks to a guitar forum I used to frequent and the annual build challenge there. I entered a few. And in a few weeks I'll be putting the motorcycles away for the year so will have a little more time on my hands...

Yeah, that might work. Though it won't be an off road bike (I've got an '88 Rockhopper Comp for that) and skinny tires on a Typhoon just don't cut it for me.

Muscle bike you say? Hmmm.....

The Sturmey hub has a drum brake. At first I wasn't all that impressed but it broke in a little and will now lock the rear wheel, so there's that.

I also put a fake brake on it to cover up the studs on the frame.

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my intro that the dog shown in my avatar was the true Desmo dog. A golden retriever mix who made it to just shy of his 17th birthday. Best boy dog ever. (Sorry Ollie, we love you but your late night antics keep you out of contention for the crown...)

 

[Captain Awesome]

Oh man, a build contest.

Cue flashbacks to a guitar forum I used to frequent and the annual build challenge there. I entered a few. And in a few weeks I'll be putting the motorcycles away for the year so will have a little more time on my hands...

Yeah, that might work. Though it won't be an off road bike (I've got an '88 Rockhopper Comp for that) and skinny tires on a Typhoon just don't cut it for me.

Muscle bike you say? Hmmm.....

The Sturmey hub has a drum brake. At first I wasn't all that impressed but it broke in a little and will now lock the rear wheel, so there's that.

I also put a fake brake on it to cover up the studs on the frame.

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my intro that the dog shown in my avatar was the true Desmo dog. A golden retriever mix who made it to just shy of his 17th birthday. Best boy dog ever. (Sorry Ollie, we love you but your late night antics keep you out of contention for the crown...)

I want to know more about that left side kick hardtail in the background

 

[DesmoDog]

I want to know more about that left side kick hardtail in the background

I had to go back and look at the pics to see what clued you in. First off, it's not a desmo. But it IS a Ducati.

A somewhat condensed version of the story; YEARS ago, when the chopper craze was huge and everyone was building huge, over tired, over engined, over priced, under braked POS "bikes" that were more for display than function, I used to joke that I was going to build one out of a Ducati single just as a big FU to that crowd. I'd tell people "I could probably do it with just the crap I have left over from other projects"

I told this to a friend of mine and he said he had a frame I could use. As in, bluff called. Put up or shut up.

And so began the hardtail project.

I had intended to find a 160cc engine for it because they arguably look the coolest. And they don't have enough power to get you into trouble. Seriously, I had the throttle stick wide open on one once. Instead of hitting the kill switch I figured out why it was stuck and unstuck it. Try that on a 150hp twin.

Anywhos, I wanted to use a 160 engine but I didn't have one. Not a complete one anyway. What I DiD have was a 250cc single. So I used that. As time went on, the bike turned more from a joke to slam together into a "Hey, this thing is kinda cool actually" and I started spending money on it. While this was going on I had a "real" project bike, a 350 single with aluminum bodywork and some other trick stuff. The hardtail used it's cast off parts.

Both projects got shoved in the corner at some point and sat for... ten years? Then I retired and I decided I wanted the hardtail done. Now it's one of my main projects and I'm actually stealing parts off the 350 to get this one finished.

So that's the story of the hardtail. But what good is a post without pictures?

My buddy gave me a frame from a 160 Monza Jr that had been basically destroyed by some hacks trying to remove the swingarm. They bent the rear section and destroyed some other details to the point the frame wasn't worth fixing. I cut the back half off of it, drilled some holes, bent some tubing, made some axle plates, and stuck it all together.

I had to buy forks and some smaller stuff for it but after that I did a bajillion mock ups using crap I had sitting around. I thought I wanted to use valanced fenders on it, but the rear fender was just too massive.

I decided I wanted more of a bobber look than a vintage bagger so I went through a lot of fenders and settled on the valanced front with a nonvalanced rear. At this point it looks more or less like this

Summed up it's built on a modified 160 Monza Jr frame using a 250 Monza engine, front end, and hubs. It's been stretched a couple inches IIRC and lowered just a bit.

So that's 10 to 15 year of messing around with it condensed into one post. There are things I'd do differently if I started on it today, but that's the way this stuff works. You can see a more in depth version of the story here if you really want to go down the rabbit hole:
https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/ducati-telaio-rigido.1516940

 

[Captain Awesome]

I had to go back and look at the pics to see what clued you in. First off, it's not a desmo. But it IS a Ducati.

A somewhat condensed version of the story; YEARS ago, when the chopper craze was huge and everyone was building huge, over tired, over engined, over priced, under braked POS "bikes" that were more for display than function, I used to joke that I was going to build one out of a Ducati single just as a big FU to that crowd. I'd tell people "I could probably do it with just the crap I have left over from other projects"

I told this to a friend of mine and he said he had a frame I could use. As in, bluff called. Put up or shut up.

And so began the hardtail project.

I had intended to find a 160cc engine for it because they arguably look the coolest. And they don't have enough power to get you into trouble. Seriously, I had the throttle stick wide open on one once. Instead of hitting the kill switch I figured out why it was stuck and unstuck it. Try that on a 150hp twin.

Anywhos, I wanted to use a 160 engine but I didn't have one. Not a complete one anyway. What I DiD have was a 250cc single. So I used that. As time went on, the bike turned more from a joke to slam together into a "Hey, this thing is kinda cool actually" and I started spending money on it. While this was going on I had a "real" project bike, a 350 single with aluminum bodywork and some other trick stuff. The hardtail used it's cast off parts.

Both projects got shoved in the corner at some point and sat for... ten years? Then I retired and I decided I wanted the hardtail done. Now it's one of my main projects and I'm actually stealing parts off the 350 to get this one finished.

So that's the story of the hardtail. But what good is a post without pictures?

My buddy gave me a frame from a 160 Monza Jr that had been basically destroyed by some hacks trying to remove the swingarm. They bent the rear section and destroyed some other details to the point the frame wasn't worth fixing. I cut the back half off of it, drilled some holes, bent some tubing, made some axle plates, and stuck it all together.

I had to buy forks and some smaller stuff for it but after that I did a bajillion mock ups using crap I had sitting around. I thought I wanted to use valanced fenders on it, but the rear fender was just too massive.

I decided I wanted more of a bobber look than a vintage bagger so I went through a lot of fenders and settled on the valanced front with a nonvalanced rear. At this point it looks more or less like this

Summed up it's built on a modified 160 Monza Jr frame using a 250 Monza engine, front end, and hubs. It's been stretched a couple inches IIRC and lowered just a bit.

So that's 10 to 15 year of messing around with it condensed into one post. There are things I'd do differently if I started on it today, but that's the way this stuff works. You can see a more in depth version of the story here if you really want to go down the rabbit hole:
https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/ducati-telaio-rigido.1516940

I figured that's what it was. Thanks for the backstory

 

[RustyGold]

Welcome to RRB!

That is a great bunch o' projects you have!


Jason