I moved onto the forks today. they had to be welded permanently and I also wanted to fit some brakes! the biggest issue is Im running a small fork pole through a larger mongoose head tube, the bearings didnt fit the cup properly and we had movement! once I have got these off i'll clean up and fold the excess from the brake boss's,
its in this pic you can see why I call thses forks...Fake triple trees! they are welded at the bottom plate, or are they all like that and only the top can come off, in any case they are pretty light gauge so they'll only be good for cruising anyway!
So I looked at this for a while and had a few changes of plan! I had another head tube with the correct sized cups n bearings, I was gonna cut that into the job, Nahhhh!...then I was gonna weld the top of the mongoose forks that was left over and weld it onto those triple forks, this was a good idea but the oversized pole was too big for the top clamp.
So then I was going to just place the bearing cups inside the larger ones and guess what , it all fit but then i'd run out of height to tighten the top clamp.
So what I did was I punched out the cups from the mongoose....
I then cut the smaller cups , while still seated inside the replacement head tube, and checked the size , whallah... they were a match made in heaven!
So these new cups ive put in still have the old head tube seated around them but that whole assembly is now pressed into the mongoose head tube! the smaller cup itself is still way too big to pull through the head tube so I really think this is the best possible solution I can come up with....with out chopping and welding LOL.
So then it was a 10 minute exercise to find a spare lever, an old cable and outer, and attach the brakes to the front, The forks came out good even though not finished, with the method i'd used the brake boss's are already lined up and everything fell into place really good!, the brake works fine!
OK...so Ive had plenty of time to look at this, all these things im doing are small jobs really but im still working incredibly slow,
Ive had a major design change come flashing through my mind and im at the stage where im ready to take the plunge and just do it. this will still be a stretched BMX, Cruiser Hybrid thingy something and for now at least will carry "Unsure" as a name to pay homage to "Direction Unknown" of which this bike is carried on from!
But im starting on it tomorrow but heres a sneak peek,
It will have a lot to do with the bike being aimed at a go-getter, heavy transport etc, groceries!
Thats right, im going to make me a......BMX Tray back Ute!!! I will try my hardest to make a small tray sorta like this one here! then ill run some brake boss's off the supports for the tray!