My dear fellow RatRodders, may I present you
...a muscle bike with a twist or might I say with a swing?
Anyway this bike twists and swings when ridden with a kids heart and makes almost everyone smile, especially the rider!
So come and swing with me...
The very first Swing Bikes were built in the US in the early and mid seventies. My first contact with a Swing Bike happened somewhere in the eighties, when I got one to try out for a few days from a local bike shop that had a homebuilt fleet of freak bikes (offcenter wheels, counter steering, ...). I fell in love with the feeling to ride one and wanted one ever since. But for many years I couldn't wrap my head around how to build one without knowing to weld...
Earlier this year I once again got sucked into a y-tube wormhole and jumped from one swingbike video to the next. At one time the idea started forming in my head how to build one without welding. I knew from building my take apart bikes (Capitan Terror and EggBeater) that on some bikes the diameters of top and down tube corresponded in a way that one could slide into the other. So I guessed that if I found two similar ladies frames with straight downtubes that probably might work as well.
I bought two beat down lady bikes and hey: it worked. So I built my first swing bike the Kirsch Special.
With the experience of that first build I wanted to build another one with some changes. First it had to be smaller, so that hopefully one of my kids would be able to ride it and second I wanted to put in a smaller front wheel to make the headtube angles a bit steeper to improve the swing handling. So I went for the search for two 26" lady frames and that's where this journey started...
Here are some more shots of my twisted creation:
Some detail shots:
the top tubes
the second pivot
stress relief to avoid bending the stear tube of the second pivot
front fender mount
headbadge sticker
cable ties from bike tubes
the little monster rear fender ornament
This is where I started (I tried the 20" fork but it dropped the front too low...)
the top tubes sliding into each other
the fork for the second pivot, bent in triangular shape with the help of some relief cuts
So far I spent around 65.- € for the whole build:
Yes you can park it like this...
or like this...
...and of course also like this:
Now go and build one for yourself! You won't regret it!
...a muscle bike with a twist or might I say with a swing?
Anyway this bike twists and swings when ridden with a kids heart and makes almost everyone smile, especially the rider!
So come and swing with me...
The very first Swing Bikes were built in the US in the early and mid seventies. My first contact with a Swing Bike happened somewhere in the eighties, when I got one to try out for a few days from a local bike shop that had a homebuilt fleet of freak bikes (offcenter wheels, counter steering, ...). I fell in love with the feeling to ride one and wanted one ever since. But for many years I couldn't wrap my head around how to build one without knowing to weld...
Earlier this year I once again got sucked into a y-tube wormhole and jumped from one swingbike video to the next. At one time the idea started forming in my head how to build one without welding. I knew from building my take apart bikes (Capitan Terror and EggBeater) that on some bikes the diameters of top and down tube corresponded in a way that one could slide into the other. So I guessed that if I found two similar ladies frames with straight downtubes that probably might work as well.
I bought two beat down lady bikes and hey: it worked. So I built my first swing bike the Kirsch Special.
With the experience of that first build I wanted to build another one with some changes. First it had to be smaller, so that hopefully one of my kids would be able to ride it and second I wanted to put in a smaller front wheel to make the headtube angles a bit steeper to improve the swing handling. So I went for the search for two 26" lady frames and that's where this journey started...
Here are some more shots of my twisted creation:
Some detail shots:
the top tubes
the second pivot
stress relief to avoid bending the stear tube of the second pivot
front fender mount
headbadge sticker
cable ties from bike tubes
the little monster rear fender ornament
This is where I started (I tried the 20" fork but it dropped the front too low...)
the top tubes sliding into each other
the fork for the second pivot, bent in triangular shape with the help of some relief cuts
So far I spent around 65.- € for the whole build:
50 for the frames
10 for the nuts and bolts
5 for the handlebar
all the other stuff came either with the bikes or was already on stock...
Revenue in terms of fun I get out of this bike: PRICELESS! Yes you can park it like this...
or like this...
...and of course also like this:
Now go and build one for yourself! You won't regret it!
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. Love that you can actually see it's to bikes.
