Ulu’s Bike Update

[Ulu]

Those are not the right pedals, so those will stay with the townie bike. I will have to get some offroad pedals, because all I have now is plastic.

I pulled out the cups from the bottom bracket today, and they came out nicely. They are still in usable shape, but they are past their prime.

I used this gear puller and I made a bridge by smashing a little short piece of tubing. I backed it up with a thick flat washer.

In action:

When you do it this way, you don’t know which cup will come out first. As it happens, it pushed out the non-drive side.

Here is the drive side.

To remove the other cup, I drew it into this big bronze nut. I’m sure you will all have one of these in your toolbox. It fits inside a 1959 American standard toilet. When I jumked the toilet in 2017, I kept the bronze parts, which were still fine. Fortunately I never recycled the nut.

I don’t know where the clamp came from. Something in the Air Force. There’s an M10 bolt there, Which drew the cup out quite easily. The nut wasn’t quite thick enough, but one tap of the hammer finished the job.

You can see the two mongoose cups and an old cup from the 50s that came out of my dad‘s toolbox. The 1950s cup has a longer land turned on it, where it touches the tubing but otherwise the new ones compare favorably. Not like those Chinese ones from the LOL bike.

I took a cut off wheel to the cable guides. I hate having exposed cable on a bicycle when it could be inside a housing, but this bike will have only a coaster brake.

I masked it with heavy duck tape to protect the tubing. I cut it as close as I dared on the first go.

And I started filing. I don’t have a die filer, so I just did it by hand with a mill file.

The rear guide is completely gone now, and the front one is next. Coarse scotchbrite disguises everything.

I think it’s time for a break.

 

[Ulu]

Fortunately this bike only had 2 guides. I cut them off and dressed the tube nicely.

I used the greatest possible care not to file the tube, but a tiny bit had to come off to remove all evidence of welding. It was only possible to make it look so nice, because the welding was just perfect.

That kind of work takes a toll on my hands and wrists. Particularly the precision filing. Thank God it was aluminum!

A recovery day was necessary both mentally and physically. Fortunately the weather cleared up and I got in a nice long bicycle ride. Then,I took a whole day off from the bike to start planning my frame jig for the fake Jaguar.

It’s not a straightforward job, but it’s very similar to what I did for a living for 20+ years. In structural engineering you take an architects building (on paper) and put a frame in it so it stands up. That’s what I have to do with this car, because the original concept was inadequate in design, and heavily flawed in construction and assembly.

I have also been looking at old photos of strange antique girder forks, trying to figure out what I want to build.

Somebody here recently posted pictures of a fork like this, with two legs on each side but minus the forward braces.

I don’t intend to copy this design but I just found it interesting.

 

[Ulu]

BTW, folks, this machine will eventually be in the build off, but I have not moved it there because I can’t decide whether this is going to be another chopper or a BMX.

I’ve got chopper forks and BMX forks but no good BMX bars yet.

I think I will weed it out of here before it gets too involved, moving it into the BMX contest. If it decides it wants to be something else, I’ll get The Captain to move the whole thread again lol.

Anyhow there’ll be a little bit of confusion here so bear with me please.

 

[Ulu]

OK guys I have officially coppied all of this aluminum bike stuff over to a new thread in the off-road build off.

Thread 'AL-U-Mini'
https://ratrodbikes.com/threads/al-u-mini.116946/

 

[Captain Awesome]

If it decides it wants to be something else, I’ll get The Captain to move the whole thread again lol.

 

[Ulu]

Eeeehhhh… no.

 

[Tallbikeman]

I set the seat down another 1.5” & this actually causes it to move forward 3/8,

View attachment 211027

But the seating position is more comfortable and I still get good leg extension.

You can also see that I reversed the gooseneck again to bring the handlebars back a little bit. I could lean them back a little bit more yet.

View attachment 211028

I think I’m going to put some upholstery on the top of the sissy bar. I liked the look when I had the striped upholstery on there.

This will allow me to sit even further back on the seat without discomfort.

Very clean looking project. Good looking bicycle. Good to hear that it can be ridden for distance and that it is quite fast. Probably surprise some bicyclists on their racer type bikes. Good job.

 

[Ulu]

Very clean looking project. Good looking bicycle. Good to hear that it can be ridden for distance and that it is quite fast. Probably surprise some bicyclists on their racer type bikes. Good job.

Thanks Tallbikeman. It was a lot if fun to build and ride. So much that I have not been able to make myself take it apart and fix the scabby paint and bodywork.

 

[Ulu]

View attachment 216845

Of course the ultimate insult would be that eventually I have you move it all back here and drop out of the contest.

But believe me. I’m not that guy.

 

[Ulu]

Well I got some work done on the latest contest bike yesterday, and took my wife out for pizza, and spent a bundle on bicycle parts.

I came home with a new set of chrome chopper forks, a 20 inch white wall tire with brick tread, some white hand grips, some silver bear trap pedals, three seat posts, a banana seat, a ladies comfort seat, headset bearings, a seat post clamp, a bunch of chrome hole plugs, and more chrome acorn nuts.

I also bought some new welding pliers and a mini ratchet from Klein tools.

I also took my truck in for a smog inspection. So it was a very expensive day.

 

[Ulu]

So far I have posted about 50 pictures of bicycles in front of my gates.

But have I ever posted a photo of what’s behind the gate? The 1000sf of landlocked concrete outside my garage which I call “The Boatyard”?

Hmmmmm… it won’t be revealing. We have some actual wet weather coming here tomorrow, and so I have everything covered up and battened down. The sun is down and it’s getting overcast and chilly and damp.

Nothing to see in the boatyard but a sea of tarps.

Beyond the tarps is the roof of my little welding shed. It’s only 8 x 12‘ and the big silver tarp you see is 16‘ x 24‘ long. Underneath all that plastic fabric are my boat, two project cars, the chassis of a third, service cart, work benches, stock racks, table saws, and a variety of bicycle junk. Grinder, big vises, engine hoist, an anvil, and all of my scrap steel odds and ends.

Believe me that it all looks much neater when it’s covered with tarps.

Anyhow, the weather is going to drive all operations indoors for the next few days, while I will be trying to get some welding done on a custom sissy bar.

 

[Ulu]

I’m trying to make the horn work correctly on my new bike. Up to this point it was pretty anemic

In order to make my horn sound correct, I replaced the cute 1/8” id copper tube with a 3/8” high density polyethylene tube. This made all the difference.

I used heat shrink tubing over the top of the fittings to seal them.

Intermediate attachment is just made with some heat shrink and a little wire clip.

It doesn’t look as attractive. I wish I could’ve gotten red tube but I could only find it in 1/8” id.

 

[Ulu]

Dragging everything outside, so I can clean the garage.

 

[Ulu]

I had to wait 24 hours for the silicone to dry before I could test my horn. It sounds terrific! I couldn’t believe the difference.

I put together a new kickstand arrangement for the AL-U-Mini. I had to extend my longest alloy kickstand with a piece of aluminum tubing. I rolled some threads inside of it, so it would grab and hold on. Then I fitted it with a hammer.

I decided that it needed a perch, to move it back and down on the bike, and this turned out to be a pretty good balance point once I extended the kickstand.

These were once destined to be the roller brackets for a 400 pound aluminum and glass sliding mall front. I drilled out the roller brackets, Which were riveted in.

I put a little steel spacer tube Between the steel plates, so nothing would collapse when I tighten the kickstand down hard.

I put these plates top and bottom of the frame.

Because of the embossments in these plates, they are really strong, and they also fit into the frame a little bit.

 

[Ulu]

Well the JB Weld worked out pretty well but this is a loooong kickstand. There’s aluminum knob on the end which I shaved down and it has a 1/4-20 deformed bolt, splicing it into the tube.

I need a couple more little acorn nuts, but otherwise I’m gonna call this bike finished.

 

[Ulu]

So could this be the start of the baby chopper bike?

 

[Ulu]

Box of kiddie forks produces a 1 inch stem suspension fork. Soon to be rigid?

 

[Ulu]

This is going to be such a simple thing that I’m not going to start a separate thread for it. I just have to clean some stuff up and throw it together quick.

New tires and serviceable tubes. 12” in front and 14” rear.

Truing the 12” front wheel. This wheel only has 16 spokes and they were all unbelievably loose.

The paint was pretty oxidized but I rubbed it out a bit and it looks better.

 

[Ulu]

The 14 inch rear wheel is going to be the booger here, because it’s a bit rusty.

 

[Ulu]

The front (iso 203/12-1/2”) wheel is only 8.5” OD”.