Somet Hingo Rother

[GeePig]

The tank is shaping up nicely. I kinda like the gas cap as it was, but that may be because I recognize the city name where a couple of custom bike building guys live. (MAD Bicycles and Adrian Lucejko Bikes).
You shouldn't have to worry about any paint melting or damaging the pvc pipe. It will hold up to most anything.

Yes, I am kind of pleased with the progress, especially since I have seen another tank here that is roughly the same shape but done in steel
I had forgotten about the Bydgoszcz people on here, or at least that they are in Bydgoszcz The cap was kind of rusty, and generally when I am adding items to a bike I paint them black generally. This means that I end up with a distinct look and parts that I later know I have used before. I don't know if that makes sense, but I began doing it with motorbikes back in the 1980s.

 

[Ulu]

We used to call that “phase 4 chrome”.
It was after the economic policies in the crash of the 80s.

 

[GeePig]

Things have been hectic around here, as we insulate our house with expanded polystyrene. So many decisions to be made, and so far to go to pick up or order stuff. Luckily the weather has been pretty good, although it is over 30 degrees today.

The tank is coming together quite well now, good enough that I have even stuck the filler tube on using my 24-hour glue. Here it is, all taped in place, roughly on the centreline of the slightly distorted tank The cardboard stuff in the middle is a former insulation tape reel that fitted quite well to act as a cutting and sanding guide.

I know that there will be a few minor scratches that will still need to be filled after I give it a spray with undercoat, but they will be easier to locate at that point.

I am quite pleased with it, just as I am with the 'Bydogoszcz' cap and the filler I applied to it. I didn't quite blend in the last bits of filler I added, so I will sand those right a bit later.

Finally, I am trying out another way of covering the seat, by sewing some edging to this top-of-the-seat pattern I have drawn out here. I know that I would get better results if I had some thicker material, but I will have to just live with what I can achieve based on my actual materials. I could go and buy some better materials, but then I would be going against one of my basic principals - try to get it to work with what you have before investing in more materials.

So that is about where I am for now, but I am going back up the warsztat later to get some progress in painting the tank and sorting out the various bits that need to go on, like cables and things like that.

I know I don't take a lot of photos of different things that I could be putting on the bike but, to be honest, I can visualise how it is going to look without keep bolting different stuff on. Yes, I am useless at many things, but visualising how complex things will look together is something that seems to work best in my head. I looked back on some of my motorbike shots I have from the 1980s, and it was the same there.

 

[kingfish254]

Things have been hectic around here, as we insulate our house with expanded polystyrene. So many decisions to be made, and so far to go to pick up or order stuff. Luckily the weather has been pretty good, although it is over 30 degrees today.

The tank is coming together quite well now, good enough that I have even stuck the filler tube on using my 24-hour glue. Here it is, all taped in place, roughly on the centreline of the slightly distorted tank The cardboard stuff in the middle is a former insulation tape reel that fitted quite well to act as a cutting and sanding guide.

I know that there will be a few minor scratches that will still need to be filled after I give it a spray with undercoat, but they will be easier to locate at that point.

I am quite pleased with it, just as I am with the 'Bydogoszcz' cap and the filler I applied to it. I didn't quite blend in the last bits of filler I added, so I will sand those right a bit later.

Finally, I am trying out another way of covering the seat, by sewing some edging to this top-of-the-seat pattern I have drawn out here. I know that I would get better results if I had some thicker material, but I will have to just live with what I can achieve based on my actual materials. I could go and buy some better materials, but then I would be going against one of my basic principals - try to get it to work with what you have before investing in more materials.

So that is about where I am for now, but I am going back up the warsztat later to get some progress in painting the tank and sorting out the various bits that need to go on, like cables and things like that.

I know I don't take a lot of photos of different things that I could be putting on the bike but, to be honest, I can visualise how it is going to look without keep bolting different stuff on. Yes, I am useless at many things, but visualising how complex things will look together is something that seems to work best in my head. I looked back on some of my motorbike shots I have from the 1980s, and it was the same there.

I can only get so far visualizing in my head. The physical mockups for me always seem to generate even more ideas that weren't even in my head.
Did you get any more work done this weekend? Keep rolling along brother!

 

[GeePig]

I can only get so far visualizing in my head. The physical mockups for me always seem to generate even more ideas that weren't even in my head.
Did you get any more work done this weekend? Keep rolling along brother!

That is a good question, and I think that the answer is that we are different. It is funny because in society we are told that we are all essentially the same, with some people being better than others, so that they get more and deserve more, or worse and deserve less, etc. etc. I say that we all have different abilities, and mine is to be able to solve very complex problems. Years ago I shared an apartment with my engineering manager, and he criticised my bookshelf for having too many different kinds of books on a wide variety of subjects - but while he had a problem with them they, to me, were just the same kind of books where the only thing different was the subject.

So yes, I pretty well know how my bike will turn out before I start, even if it is something that I have never done before.

Back in the 1980s I built myself a motorbike out of a 1973 Honda Cub, and here it has had unwanted things removed and initial welding done...

... and here it is finished, pretty much as I visualised it. When I wanted a fuel tank for it, I went down the breakers yard and said 'I'm looking for a fuel tank, about this big," and this Kawasaki one is what they brought to the counter.

I love to read how you and others work with your stuff, in your own way, as I know that I will never see let alone own such things

 

[GeePig]

Here is the tank with its full, still partly wet, undercoat on it - it is not perfect but is more like I would imagine a 100 year old bike would look like it it was still being used instead of being fully restored. I don't do restorations, and even in my artwork nothing is every fully finished to the degree that many people seem to expect. The paintwork on the bike has been given a clear coat to protect its 30 year old life, and so the other major bodywork items have to reflect this.

Now it looks like some kind of submarine.

Here I have installed the gear change cable, and have cut a slot in the tank mounting tube so that I can slid it up the middle. I was thinking about fitting it inside the frame tube, but I am worried that doing that might weaken the frame. For now, with the tank being fitted, it can run thought the middle and I can clamp the cable to the frame later.

Here is the cable at the grip end. It seems that I have only one outer cable long enough to stretch in a single piece from the front to the back, and that is for the brake.

This cable needs two outer housings connected together, and unfortunately the photo I took of the connector I made came out really badly.

It seems I am getting close to the end, because all I need do now is sort the saddle, install the inner cables to the back, fit the pedals and cut a chain to fit.

And I have the rest of the week off to do that!

 

[Pondo]

This is a fun build. I'm really liking the bike you chose to build as it's not like anything I've had experience with before. The ingenuity and creativity here is top notch. It's really cool to see it coming together. Nice work, looking forward to seeing the finished product!

 

[kingfish254]

Here is the tank with its full, still partly wet, undercoat on it - it is not perfect but is more like I would imagine a 100 year old bike would look like it it was still being used instead of being fully restored. I don't do restorations, and even in my artwork nothing is every fully finished to the degree that many people seem to expect. The paintwork on the bike has been given a clear coat to protect its 30 year old life, and so the other major bodywork items have to reflect this.

Now it looks like some kind of submarine.

Here I have installed the gear change cable, and have cut a slot in the tank mounting tube so that I can slid it up the middle. I was thinking about fitting it inside the frame tube, but I am worried that doing that might weaken the frame. For now, with the tank being fitted, it can run thought the middle and I can clamp the cable to the frame later.

Here is the cable at the grip end. It seems that I have only one outer cable long enough to stretch in a single piece from the front to the back, and that is for the brake.

This cable needs two outer housings connected together, and unfortunately the photo I took of the connector I made came out really badly.

It seems I am getting close to the end, because all I need do now is sort the saddle, install the inner cables to the back, fit the pedals and cut a chain to fit.

And I have the rest of the week off to do that!

for some reason the pics in this post didn't come through.

 

[Ulu]

Yeah, no pics.

 

[GeePig]

This is a fun build. I'm really liking the bike you chose to build as it's not like anything I've had experience with before. The ingenuity and creativity here is top notch. It's really cool to see it coming together. Nice work, looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Thanks, I always find it interesting to see other people working with bikes I have never seen in real life before

 

[GeePig]

for some reason the pics in this post didn't come through.

Sorry, I failed to shuffle the pictures into the right location, again...

 

[GeePig]

I think I have done enough on the tank to move forward to the final painting stage.

When I say 'enough' I, of course, mean enough for the paint and the surface it covers to look like they have been around for some time, seen some action on the tracks and has not yet achieved the stage where it is refinished and repainted to a state that it never achieved...

And yes, it is all made from Wavin plastics, a company I have known most of my life.

Here is the first coat, which looks a bit rough...

While waiting for that to dry, I got on with manufacturing the bit to join the two bits of the gear change cable together. Here I have screwed and locked in place a bolt so that I do not drill too far into this connection nut thingy. I am not sure what these nuts are for, but I bought a selection from our local store, just for these odd jobs. I will be replacing the bolt with a proper cable support once the drilling is over.

Well, several days later, and the painting is all over, and it is time to fit the tank. I think it looks good, although I will have to wind some black insulation tape around the inner support tube to stop the tank from rotating - as it is a slightly loose fit. I am pleased with how it is looking, and just wish I could find somewhere locally that sells adhesive lettering I could use to put 'Zenit' on the tank.

I think I got the size and shape just about right.

And this is how it looks from the front.

The things keeping the rear wheel in place are a couple of weights from the scales I discovered recently in another of my barns, plus a horse bit (the two-piece mouthpiece that goes in the horses mouth and the two attached rings) that I found in this room.

The racks on the wall contain most of the missing bits from the bike, although I have noticed a few bits left from some earlier decisions about what I was putting on the bike.

It is looking pretty much as I imagined it would, like a recent rebuild of an old racing bike. Now I just need to make the decision / do the work on the saddle.

 

[ifitsfreeitsforme]

I order custom cut vinyl graphics online (my designs, their process). Perhaps you could look into that? Looking good, keep up the progress.

 

[GeePig]

I order custom cut vinyl graphics online (my designs, their process). Perhaps you could look into that? Looking good, keep up the progress.

As I mostly live in a small village at the end of a road in rural eastern Poland, I made the decision to work mostly with stuff that I can find or buy locally. It sounds weird, but I love the challenge of reusing stuff I can only find locally.

Of course I am always tempted to go online...

 

[GeePig]

So I have 1 Romet Turing, 4 Romet Jubilats and 2 Romet Wigry - and a small bunch of odd frames from other stuff I have found or bought for parts. Romet is the classic Polish bike manufacturer from the communist era, which means that parts are readily available for all the "classics" I own from the bottom end of the market.

Here is my partly modified 1988 Wigry, to give you an idea of its size on its 20" wheels. I found this one abandoned, in pieces, one day when we arrived back home late at our block last year, along with a Dutch bike with a trashed fork (the left hand crank is on this Wigry, because that was missing).

I was also given a 1982 Wigry, which I am stripping to rebuild and sell next year, and after messing around with my collection of partially damaged Romet seats with the idea of covering one to use I finally noticed that the seat on the Wigry was undamaged. It even has springs on the rear.

As I will not be needing the bike to be complete for a few months, I thought I might try it out...

This must be one of the last sprung and sewn seats, because sometime after this they all became a variety of sponge plastic shapes moulded onto the base that I normally use as a seat on this bike.

What I would really like to find is a pair of wide rim wheels, and a decent set of tyres to go on them.

 

[kingfish254]

Wow, the tank really came out looking great!!!

 

[Shrunken_Head_Pedaler]

Yep, filling is a skill I am learning, but at least I am now forgetting that it is a bit of plastic pipe, which I suppose is a good thing. I reckon with a bit more sanding and minor filling I should be close to being done, except the areas around where the mounting tube passes through it...

...and the filler cap.

Because I have what was a small farm in Poland, there were about a hundred or so glass jars lying around everywhere in the barns, some of them bought especially for preserving stuff and others bought for the stuff in them. Most of them have now gone, except about 40 in the external cellar which still have rather aged pickled cucumbers in them. One day I will have to haul them out of there, but at the moment there is still plenty of room for the things that we bottle and store down there. Anyway, I needed something to act as something that looked like a fuel cap, and I found this in my metal scrap store.

'Białystok' is a city in Poland, where they made whatever vegetable produce that was in the jar.

I cleaned up the cap, and then it was time for a bit of filler so that it no longer looks like a bottle cap for some kind of bottled vegetable produce. There are many, many good things that they sell bottled in Poland, but an awful lot of cheap crap too where you can hardly taste whatever it was that they stuffed in there.

Anyway, we are popping off to the city for a couple of days now, so hopefully I will have the chance to ride the pair of bikes I keep there, if it doesn't rain.

The cap is awesome! I love your creative tank work!

 

[GeePig]

Wow, the tank really came out looking great!!!

It was better than I thought it was going to be, and I really enjoyed everything it took to get it finished.

 

[GeePig]

The cap is awesome! I love your creative tank work!

Only the best from Bialystok

 

[GeePig]

Today it was time to slip some cables down those housings I installed the other day. Usually I just fit them as a cable in a housing, but I have recently decided to store them separately as I have so many damaged housings or cables. It was a good feeling to slip the cable down the housing after all the housing installation was already completed.

Here is where fitting the housing separately was key, as I joined the rear brake cable here where the cable came out of the frame. Normally the rear brake and gear change are strapped to the frame using plastic frame clips. It works, but since the cables have to pass the frame folding joint, miss the front sprocket and the rear wheel, you end up with a floppy cable mess. I decided that this time I was going to get them installed in some way that kind of made sense to the bike and to the eye.

Of course, ideally I would have a ream of brake cable housing where I could just snip off the required amount. In reality I had none even close to being long enough, and I could find nothing in the local stores. So, as I showed the other day, I made this cable joiner up out of a nut, long nut and a nipple. I then removed the rubber nipples in the frame that hold the rear light cable, and fed this through instead. Of course, the cable holes were on the wrong side of the frame, as it would surely be better to hide the rear light cable behind the chain and chain guard.

I know I have several time mentioned restricting where I buy stuff to local stores, but it is something that I have always done. Here is a selection of the spanners and ratchet I have been using here.

Snap-on ratchet, with 'Powerbosh', blank, Kamasa, something, Halfords, Britool and Gordon. Halfords is a car and bicycle superstore chain in the UK, and they also owned the 'Gordons' brand I think. 'Powerbosh' might be Polish, meant to sound like 'Power Bosch' (cough, cough...).

When I moved to Poland I left behind many of my tools, as I only had a certain amount of stuff that I could take - and I have since had to buy/find stuff here. So here we have Elora, Lux-tools, Britool, Gordon, Zakłady Metalowe Radom and blank. The unmarked tool here I assume must have come with some agricultural machine, as I found it rusted away in one of our barns. The Zaklady... one probably came from a car or motorcycle toolkit, and like so much under communism the name is merely a description, literally 'Manufacturer in Metal in Radom' (Radom is a city in central Poland).

There is not really a lot more to do to this bike, except the vital test rides to sort out the problems and fitting the forgotten things.