Spare Parts - FINISHED

[SpikeFC]

Loving this, that headlight looks perfect on there!

Looks good. I like how the frame turned out.

+1 on the headlight, that is cool; and big!
I think if you could shorten that rear brace on the fender, to bring it in so it fits like the front of the fender does, it will 'tighten up' the look and visually fatten the rear tire.

Looks like light blue is a popular color this year!

Thanks guys!

I have a bit of a history with blue means of transportation, since I owned 4 blue cars, and two of them were light blue. Also I always loved the Gulf color palette, so for me the color was a natural choice.

Tried some options with that fender brace, since the dropouts have two identical mounts, but since I'm using a sissy bar, i couldn't use the mounting closer to front. But I was thinking about it - bending it a little or shortening.

Tommorow I'm going to small potapocalyptic LARP with my friends, but. I took some homework with me...

 

[sandman]

Thanks guys!

I have a bit of a history with blue means of transportation, since I owned 4 blue cars, and two of them were light blue. Also I always loved the Gulf color palette, so for me the color was a natural choice.

Tried some options with that fender brace, since the dropouts have two identical mounts, but since I'm using a sissy bar, i couldn't use the mounting closer to front. But I was thinking about it - bending it a little or shortening.

Tommorow I'm going to small potapocalyptic LARP with my friends, but. I took some homework with me...

What is a potapocalyptic LARP ?

 

[Captain Awesome]

What is a potapocalyptic LARP ?

Live Action Role Play

Post apoc in this case so think Mad Max themed

 

[SpikeFC]

Live Action Role Play

Post apoc in this case so think Mad Max themed

Exactly - a role playing game themed in combination of Mad Max/Fallout. This particular on is focusing on the change of leadership in our group. Ofcourse it's not ony a game, but some chilling & grilling and a party in the evening is also involved

 

[OddJob]

Exactly - a role playing game themed in combination of Mad Max/Fallout. This particular on is focusing on the change of leadership in our group. Ofcourse it's not ony a game, but some chilling & grilling and a party in the evening is also involved

Sounds interesting. Are Mad Max type vehicles involved as well? That's the part I remember best from the original movie.

 

[SpikeFC]

Sounds interesting. Are Mad Max type vehicles involved as well? That's the part I remember best from the original movie.

On bigger & longer LARPS that's one of the necessities, since it's very tiring to walk more than 3 miles dressed in armor, and carrying all the needed stuff with you.

Heres my friend Bens Pontiac he calls Sharky:

Not much modification since he drives it each year from Switzerland to Poland.

But there are also much crazier cars like this one - The Killer:

It's equipped with a potato gun powered by a truck air compressor installed over the V8 engine. It was also converted from EFI to a carburetor taken from the same truck, the Polish made Star 28.

And here is one of my cars - My old Renault Clio converted to an armored car. Still in progress

I'm even sitting behind the wheel in this picture

Most of the small LARPS we do in a place called Battle Arena Łódź - in an abandoned fruit & vegetables processing plant, that normally works as an airsoft/paintball shooting range, so there's very little space to drive a car. It actually took me a lot of effort to manage and drive my workshops bike hauler to make this picture.

Buuuuuut... back to the build. I started to work on the homework - the handles. Found a set of very heavily used silicone covered handles, and wanted to trim them with some nice pieces of leather that I found in my garage...

...but a friend of mine said "Hey Spike, there's a game of Nemesis playing right now, and we're short on one player" so I had to drop it, and play a short game... for like six hours... I just love those "short turn board games", I think I will try and finish them today, that's really a better idea...

Also today I had very little time in the shop to work on the Build-Off bicycles, so I just dug out this wooden handle that will be my stick shifter knob. It's a part of a masonry tool that I found one day riding to work, near a construction site.

Also I discovered a problem today - my headtube in the fork has only 21mm inner diameter, and since most of the stems are 22.2mm it will be very difficult to find a matching stem to go with this fork.

 

[SpikeFC]

So i did my homework yesterday evening. At least half of it.

Custom made leather handlebars anyone?

Now just need to make the second handle in the same way as the first one, and the set is done.

By the way I also found out a small issue with the derailleur mount.

The derailleur didn't want to go pass the lower part of the sissy bar.

Now that's better. Grinder always doeas the trick. Since the derailleur, shift cable & outer casing was already in place, the time came to make it all work properly. I found a piece of a thin iron bar that just might do the trick.

A little threading...

...a few nuts...

And it's done!

It has a lot of travel since it's a 6 speed shifter, but I really don't care. I'll just try to mount the steering bar so that it will not hit it. Right now only one thing was missing.

Well actually make it two things. Like two chains. All the gears work, the shifting is kinda stiff, but it all works just fine.

You may also have noticed that I put the rear brake, all the cables & "new"(Reausable Junk I think I might have to make a brand out of it... Genuine Reusable Junk Parts or something like that.) brake levers.

Also you might notice I got a stem, buuuuuut it's not that simple....

I contacted my best source for old bike parts - a girl that i met on a FB group that sells old bike stuff, here in Poland. She has TONS of oldschool bike parts...

Yeah, that's not even 1/4 of her stash. Sadly all the stems that she has are 22mm or bigger so are of no use on this build.

The one that is on the picture is a quilless (that's how you call 'em right?) stem that I got with bunch of parts that I recently traded for some old car magazines from the nineties. It was originally used on ZZR/Karat folding bicycles.

If I won't find anything I'll just convert this one.

 

[sandman]

You know what they say . OPJ ( Other people's junk ) is always another persons treasure .Plus we all love digging thru OPJ .

 

[toro1978]

This is a cone shaped quill stem if I can recognize it correctly from this pic.

 

[SpikeFC]

This is a cone shaped quill stem if I can recognize it correctly from this pic.

Well it looks like this:

And I will need to convert it to work like this:

Nothing that I can't handle

You know what they say . OPJ ( Other people's junk ) is always another persons treasure .Plus we all love digging thru OPJ .

I often just write a short message "You know I need ......... "<== Insert a lot of parts names here, and she just sends me back pictures of what she has, and in a week their already paid and in my workshop. Great deal.

 

[toro1978]

Ah, I see now. How does it attach then (the quillless), I don't see a tightening bolt, what is the secret?
I only knew quill stem and ahead stem.

 

[LukeTheJoker]

I contacted my best source for old bike parts - a girl that i met on a FB group that sells old bike stuff, here in Poland. She has TONS of oldschool bike parts...

Yeah, that's not even 1/4 of her stash. Sadly all the stems that she has are 22mm or bigger so are of no use on this build.

Seems like a good friend to have!

 

[SpikeFC]

Ah, I see now. How does it attach then (the quillless), I don't see a tightening bolt, what is the secret?
I only knew quill stem and ahead stem.

As I wrote in @us56456712 thread:

Those type of stems were used in all polish folding bicycles, and in some of the children bicycles. The head tube on the fork was longer, so that 1" of it was sticking above the top nut of the headset (the one that tightens the whole hedset. That nut was going all the way trough the thread on the fork tube). The top of the tube was cut in half and compressed by this clamp.

It was a popular thing in folding bicycles until they invented those long-quick folding stems used mostly in Dahon bicycles. I think I preffere this type of stem since I already had one of those Dahon bikes with a broken tensioning screw, and another one where 3/4 of the weld had broken off from the hinge

Seems like a good friend to have!

Eyup! And the best part is that she sells parts for a very good price - I bought two Sachs 3Gang hubs with shifters, 3 oldschool reflectors (including two of the one that I used on this build ), a very oldschool child seat in white vinyl & a lot of other smaller parts for 30$ +5$ shipping.

Today rain struck from nowhere, and kept pouring almost the whole day, so I got bored, and came up with my new brand of bicycle parts

My goal today was to mount the steering bar, so my first idea was to marry my quilles stem with this thing that I found in my personal stash.

After a lot of butchering, thinking and changing parts, by the combined powers of three different stems this monstrosity was born.

A 21mm short quill stem. And with some butchery done to the steering bar...

I got me a rider!

It rides sweet! It's kinda weird to get onto it, had to flip the stick shifter handle 180 degrees so it would not hit the bar on the 6th gear.

I think the next few days will be mostly bending a lot of parts with some brutal muscle power & figuring out some of the problems that I had.

The smaller ones:

As @OddJob pointed out - the rear fender has too much space on the rear.

The headlight mount needs to have some kind of support, so that the light doesn't wobble & fall to the side from it's own weight. Also I need to bend it so that it won't light up peoples faces instead of the road.

The seating position is too vertical, so I think I need to bend that sissy bar to the back.

The really BIG problems.

The chain keeps falling off on the 1st gear, so I think the plastic chainguard will be bolted back (ofcourse it doesn't mean that I won't use the metal one, rather both of them )

The steering is just awfull since the front wheel has not enough clearence from the crankset. Will need to figure it out since it's downright dangerous right now.

The front brake mount is a little bit too high so I think I will cut a plate to make it go lower - and also that means I will have to make a new, longer outer casing for the cable.

For other news I mocked up one of the handlebars that I made. (ofcourse I forgot to take the second one home to trim it with leather... don't worry, just me, move along ).

The red goes great with the red nipples, and the brown looks good with the seat. I'm also considering repainting the shifter knob to darker brown to match the seat & bars. The bell was put there only to worn people whole doing the test ride, but it has a really nice "ding-dong" sound (Ofcourse it's from THAT box). Still considering if I will use a bell, a trumpet or an electric motorcycle horn.

 

[SpikeFC]

So i got back to my usual schedule since most of the work on the Class 1 build is done I can concentrate on this one.

Not a lot of progress today, but still some!

Sadly I tried shortening the fender mount, and it seems that the screws that I use for the mount & reflector, are too long, and even when I used thick washers, I just couldn't make it fit better around the wheel. Also it doesn't look that good with a shortened mount. Might try & work on this detail later in the build, for now it must just stay as it is .

I used some Brutal Slav Barbaric Power & bent the sissy bar a little to the back so now I can lay back while riding.

Also found an old bell that I took the top off to use as a plug for the shifter stub.

And also discovered that I broke the plastic chainguard, that I need to use to keep my chain from falling from the crank sprocket while on 1st gear. Will definetely need to fix that. Also I need to install the outer part of this chainguard so the chain will not fall when on 6th gear .

Smaller things? I made a line to how to cut the metal chainguard mount. Still something...

And got an idea how to move the front wheel about a 2.5in to the front and 0.5in up. Will need to go to a hardware store tommorow, and to my garage to find & buy some stuff that I need.

 

[SpikeFC]

So the mailman came with a small present.

Once again thanks @sdframe for this great license plate from Douglas AZ. I will definitely be a great "cherry on the top" in this build

Also went shopping to the hardware store, and bought some parts for the fork.

Started working on it to, but since the weather in Warsaw is finally better there were a lot customers today, so I didn't get a chance to spend more than 15 minutes in the lower workshop, and that's the only place where I can drill & cut peacefully. Then again - more customers, means that my boss is happy, and I have the satisfaction of working on even more bicycles

 

[OddJob]

It's cool that you have a little get away down stairs where you can run and hide once in awhile! Our basement at the shop houses around 200 bikes, but it's nice and cool down there, so we make excuses to 'see if there is that model / size downstairs'.

Weather has taken a summer like turn here too. In the 80's for the first time this year. Tomorrow through Sunday look good as well.

So you will have a cherry 'desert' on top of your build, courtesy of SD in Tucson! (dessert spelling intended). That's cool!

 

[SpikeFC]

It's cool that you have a little get away down stairs where you can run and hide once in awhile! Our basement at the shop houses around 200 bikes, but it's nice and cool down there, so we make excuses to 'see if there is that model / size downstairs'.

I basically have most of the "heavy" tools downstairs, so I do most of the grinding, drilling, cutting and other noisy stuff down there. Also a place to wash bikes, clean gunk, and paint as you seen before

Also downstairs houses a rock studio & music school that is run by a guy that played with a one of the best known old Polish bands - Oddział Zamknięty. So it can be really nice when you work there, and have a live band playing just trough the wall.

For me the other function is that I can smoke there, and none of the local hobos bothers me with frazes like "boss, give a cigarette", "manager, spare change" or "mate, can you buy me beer, since they don't want to sell it to me". Their a real plague here tend to try & sell you stolen bicycle parts, smell very bad & sit in the park next to the shop and make a mess around them... The guy that worked before me in the shop warned me, that he once gave a cigarette to one of them and he was following him the next the weeks wanting change, smokes, beer and talking drunk b.......t

 

[sdframe]

Great progress! Your resourcefulness is amazing.

 

[SpikeFC]

Great progress! Your resourcefulness is amazing.

Thanks again @sdframe !

Some of you are probably asking themselves - "What in the... is he planning to do with 4 large door hinges, nuts and a threaded 10mm steel bar... And in a moment you will know...

First of all - put the plastic chainguard back together - that should stop the chain from falling out from the chainring on the lowest gear.

Still need to ride around to see if this solves the problem. Also my second boss from the workshop gave me an idea on what to do with the second bb that is now left empty - I will just put the old BB axle in there and mount a small sprocket taken from an old derailleur - that might do the trick on tensioning the chain more properly & above all - look cool .

And about that fork-to-tire clearance issue... you may remember how I planned the fork in the early process on the build, right?

Well.. that's where all the parts from the hardware store came into use

Still need to weld & short the upper mounts on the fork, but it looks like it does the trick! The wheel moved a little bit up so right now I can adjust the front brake better, and it moved 50mm to the front giving me a lot of clearance to the pedals while turning. The other pleasant side effect is that it actually moved the whole frame a little bit to the ground, so right now it doesn't look like it's super high.

 

[SpikeFC]

Sorry for the long absence

Found some "Reusable Junk" rear lights & started working on putting them in the truck light that I have.

Also finished the fork, only need to get it welded for more strenght.

Got an idea on what to do with the old BB - just turn it into a chain tensioner!

With all that in mind - I decided to put on the front fender, some lights & grips and take it on a ride home to see how everything is working...

And up to the first 3 miles (half the way) it was fine, until I heard some knocking coming out of the new BB...

Oh well... first weld in my life using a cheap welder Just need to haul it back to the shop for some serious TIG welding.