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The MiniChop came about from some online chatting with a car buddy who is also big into anything-bike. I wanted something I could cruise around on with my kids, something down on their level. I was sure that what most bike choppers could use is a stronger visual connection with the motorcycle type through a bigger-wheel-up-front approach. And that if I could execute that with some long front forks, I'd have a bike that was unmistakably
chopper. I also wanted to keep the costs down to zero (outside of wire/gas for welding) which should be easy to do since I had a collection of free
junk bikes and other scrap metal. And finally I wanted it to work for me ergonomically- at least as well as it could for chopper-posture. After some scratching on paper, I wound up at the finished drawing below.
The idea was to utilize a 16" and 20" kids bike in the build. Essentially creating a hybrid- smaller rear half with the larger front half.
The time finally came to put the build into action. After a full day of wrenching on my project car, my buddy and I were looking for something different to do before his flight out of town. We started out with some bike frame cutting to get the halves we needed for the hybrid frame. Then I laid down on my side in the middle of the garage floor as he positioned the frame pieces and did some marking with sidewalk chalk. It was obvious at that point that just sticking the halves together wasn't going to work. After some more garage floor engineering, we had a good frame layout to work our pieces into. After roughly four hours of work we had the core structure and forks completed.
Next I added in the lower frame section with the crank location per our chalk layout. Fortunately I throw out as little as I can and this is the exact moment it pays off. The addition of some old exhaust pipe and a tube from a baby swing allowed me to complete the frame as seen below.
The MiniChop remains mostly unchanged from the frame design above. It was just a matter of assemble and ride.
It has been ridden by several adults at this point and nobody has an issue riding it. It serves well as a cruiser to put me down at the same level as the kids.
In motion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtnzxodZqc
