2 New Projects

Victoria separating bike with Velocino front end....

and the same thing with wheels.

Velocino in its heyday... well ok, it never had one.

Byk E450X8

Checking out brake cabling: after swapping to a mini-V brake, this arrangement will work, just like....

this one does on my wooden trike.

Cranks with 2 sets of pedal holes.

Of course, when you are dealing with 451 wheel bikes you wander around then see them everywhere.  This was taken on a pleasurable post office, pub and supermarket shopping trip. Foreground: Tokyobikes mini-velo, background, modularbikes leaning trike.

Hi

After some time spent fixing some fairly standard bikes including some donations to Wecycle, I have hauled some projects of my own round to the back yard.  For a while, I haven't been building anything new because I have too many bikes already and wanted to sell one on ebay before starting again. But the ebay bike (still there, still a bargain) hasn't budged and its been a few months, so I'm breaking my drought of building.

Project 1, Velocino Convertible

Quite a while ago, I bought some Victoria separating bikes.  They are like folding bikes, but instead of folding split into two.  The red one I had was fixed up, sold to a friend, was donated back to me and eventually sold for charity.  And the blue one.....

Well I've treated it as an experimental bike, lavishing attention on it, then ignoring it for long periods, before returning to it to hack away again.  Upgrades have included making a Velocino front end for it that was never finished off, fitting a Sturmey-Archer S2C rear hub to it, and then swapping forks so the front wheel is 20" instead of 24" to carry more load over the front wheel.  A few weeks ago, the long suffering Victoria had a tyre switcheroo done on it, leaving it front wheelless.  Since then, on windy, rainy, stormy nights, I can hear it creaking "help me" as it sits forlornly outside.* But it does need fixing up!  Paint, derusting, pack racks, steering for Velocino etc quite urgently required.

Project 2, Byk Trike

For a few weeks, a rather good kids bike has been available at Wecycle, a Byk E450X8 and last Saturday I finally bought it, getting it at heavily discounted mates rates.  Its got the "narrow tyre 20" " (451) tyres on it, cassette rear sprocket and a light frame.  The plan is to convert it into one of my recumbent bikes or trikes, and I've been scoping the parts for potential uses as I dismember it.  More to come on this project.

Regards

Steve Nurse



* Note: not actually true