Making a Front Wheel Drive Derailleur

1. Start with a steel frame bike and remove the back wheel, deraileur and associated cables.  Hacksaw out the rear right hand side dropout  / derailer hanger as shown.  (This frame has a built in deraileur hanger)

2. Shape the hanger part of the frame you have just liberated.  It needs to be brazed on or attached to the bike fork as shown in photo 4.

3.  Slip steel tubes over the legs of the bike fork.  Stand on one of them and pull up on the other one to spread the legs of the fork to accommodate the wider (quick release) drive wheel.   The completed assembly is shown in photo 5.  It may take a few goes to get this right.

4.  Find a bolt (and matching nut) with a diameter the same as the wheel bolt.  Use it to attach the deraileur hanger to the fork.  Attach the deraileur to the hanger, it should point forwards on the right hand side of the fork and be in a position to work on the bike!  This position puts the deraileur in its "standard position" relative to the wheel centre.  Once it is attached in this way, the deraileur can be removed and then the hanger can be attached (brazed, welded or bolted) to the fork dropout.

5.  This shows the quick release wheel in place.  (In this case no cluster is fitted) Note that the bolt end can't protrude past the existing fork dropout, otherwise it will hit the derailleur hanger.  This set of parts has not gone into a bike yet.

6.  But here is one that has!  The chain, quick release skewer and gear change cable are all present.  Note that the quick release skewer must be completely removed to take away the wheel.  (This is a deraileur with a built-in hanger.  Installation steps are slightly different for this type)

7.  Vehicle with derailleur fitted, photo 6 is a detail of the deraileur of this machine.

Hi

This shows the sort of work I do to adapt a steel front bike fork and deraileur hanger for use on a front wheel drive bike.  I've never put this down in writing before.  Hope you can make some use of it.  Regards

Steve Nurse

Monoblade fork bike progress

Kids! You Just can't stop them.

Slow but steady progress on the new....

Monoblade Fork Bike reveals the purpose of the laser cut plate shown in this post.

Family Gathering at our House.

Hi

Its been a fairly quiet weekend here in Clifton Hill.  Fine yesterday (and typical of our mild Autumn ) and rainy most of today (1st day of Winter), and I spent a bit of time on a bike build.  Quite a bit of detailed work goes into making the parts, most of which are not ready made for the job but come from steel tube, large washers, bronze bush and steel rod from the shed.  Anyway hopefully something recognizable as a bike is starting to emerge.  This afternoon, Mum, Dad, my son Ewan and Christine's brothers and their families all came over for afternoon tea.  My nephew was quite keen on our rickshaw and did a few laps of the street.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Simply Violets Audax Ride

Short Break on the Dookie / Violet Town Road

Welcome to Violet Town

A multi rider bike under construction outside the Violet Town Men's Shed

Violet Town

More of the bike bus!

Shepparton to Violet town road

Last stretch into Shep

And the post mortem, organiser Gordon is in red.

Hi

Not much to say here.  Managed to take some halfway decent photos during a 100k Audax ride around Shepparton.  Very nice weather and good flat roads, good company.

Regards

Steve Nurse

In Principle Support for iLean trike

The ilean trike standing up, the stand is at the top of the middle wheel

and made from these bits......

which work by resting the wheel on the stand when the right wheel is forward.......

but allowing the wheels to run free when the right wheel is back.......

all written while Christine's sister Vicki popped over for a cup of tea.

Hi

At work, I lean my bike against a post when I park it as it hasn't got a stand.  Sometimes, to make the bike a bit more stable I use a cable tie to hold a brake on which means the bike can't roll.  And after a while I thought, well, if I cut a recess in the side of the plywood seat and have the recess against the pole when I park it, it would do the same thing as putting the "cable tie park brake" on, and would take less time.  But I haven't done this yet.

However I thought a bit more about parking and the iLean trike I made.  (the trike won't stand up by itself because it tilts automatically just like a bike, see the video) It has 2 wheels at the back and for riding it, there is no difference whether the left wheel is forward or backward when you ride it.  So if you ride it (say) left wheel forward, then left wheel back position can be reserved for parking the bike, by having the right wheel banging against something on the trike.  A bit hard to explain but maybe the photos tell the story better.

Anyway, I made the stand from a bit of wood in the shed and some cable ties.  Lo and behold, it works!

But his post is called "in principle support" for a reason.  The stand is not all that secure and its tied onto the plastic corflute tailbox which is a bit wobbly, am sure I can do better with a less spontaneous design.

Anyway, that's it for now.  Hope to have a new bike done in 2 weeks or so.

Regards

Steve Nurse

iLean back on the road.

Christine in the rickshaw and friends at the local state school's Mother's Day run

Back on the bike after the forks were repaired

Final part of fixing the forks with a spacer made from part of an old cluster used as a spacer.

Christine is oblivious!  I have been dagging around with bikes like this ever since we met and that is a few years ago now.

My son Ewan bravely tries out the bike after fixing the fork the first time.  The steering wasn't straight, the pedal banged on the fork, the gear change cable scraped on the wheel and the chain clunked on the cluster.

Hi

It has been the weekend of Mother's Day and I've spent the time well, picking up some bike bits from the post office, buying some flowers, seeing my mum, dad, my son and his girlfriend and going to a fun-run gathering, with quite a bit of bike fixing in between.

The ilean trike is just about fixed now after the front fork broke.  The new fork came from a $20.00 ebay bike which I stripped down.  (As mentioned earlier, early ladies mountain bikes aren't that popular and go out cheap or even free.)   By the time we were ready to go to Saturday lunch I was ready to try it out, and it happened that Ewan and Phoebe came back afterwards.  So Ewan had a go on the up-till-then-not-very-well-fixed-bike.

Late this afternoon I stared on the monoblade rear fork: will report more later.

And of course I cannot let this blog go without reporting on the great social, political and cultural events of the day.  The things which matter.  A bloke with a beard, dressed like a diva, and coming from Austria won the Eurovision song contest.  At least it takes the football off the front pages for a day or two. 

Weekend at home

Christine at Home

Front Wheel Drive Fork Mod.

Fork Broke about 1 street away from home.

Lots of this sort of bike available!

iLean Trike

New iLean trike rear wheels

Hi

This 3-day weekend I have been at home working on the house and a few bikes, some of the results can be seen in the photos.

The simplest machine to fix with the new parts I received recently should have been the iLean trike, a simple rear wheel swap was required.   At the same time as fixing the back, I overhauled the front, and this included renewing the disc brake cable.  Unfortunately as I went for a test ride, (and trip to the dumpster) my foot got caught in the brake cable and the brake was duly applied by accident.  The front fork broke as a result!  Its quite possible it was cracked already, and breaking only 1 street away from home was really not such a bad result.  But its back to the drawing board a bit for an extended test for the new iLean trike parts.

As well as starting on a new wooden bike, I have been around the neighbourhood gathering parts for future bike projects.  The 10 year old, 26" mountain bike has now past its used by date in inner Melbourne and on Saturday I saw several on offer at Garage Sales.  Today there were several on hard rubbish piles and at the dumpster and I've gathered up wheels, chains, bar ends, Aheadset bits, brake levers and other parts from the corpses.  Most of the bikes have suspension front forks, but aside from that It's all good!

All for now.  Back to work tomorrow.

Regards

Steve Nurse

New Parts!

Shafts for iLean trikes

Reinforcing brace for rear Monostay on wooden bike.

Hi

In the last few days, I've picked up a few custom made bike bits I've ordered.  This will keep me busy at home on the weekends for a while.

iLean trike shafts: Vi Vuong designed a series of Python style trikes and has a series of videos about them.  I've made my own version but something bugged me about the design.  The assembly of the wheels onto the shafts was a bit of a hit and miss affair and (for me at least) involved abducting perfectly innocent pedals and 20" bike wheels, torturing, and forcing them into an unholy marriage.  Well, maybe not quite that bad but "a bit messy" from an engineering point of view.  So to sort it out, I ordered some hubs from Bitex, and had them built into wheels by Abbotsford Cycles.  Lastly, I designed and ordered some NC machined shafts from a local supplier, and I picked these up a few days ago.  Not much left to do to install them now, although I might have to reinstate some parts stolen from the trike.  Will report more later.

My Hollow Beam Bike has been great fun to build and ride but the design of the "rear triangle" could be improved.  How about a monostay as championed by Mr. Mike Burrows? There's no brake on the back wheel to complicate things and it can be as aerodynamic as all hell.  Here is an example from Toxy in Germany using a very solid hinge.  My approach will be a bit different, I'm using a laser cut steel plate to go on the side of the hinge  and reiforce the monostay.  The monostay can be from the same material as the main frame, slightly larger than the stays I have used previously.  Finishing a bike with this monostay is slightly longer term, It involves building a whole bike first!

Regards

Steve Nurse

Murray 1200, The Poem

Simon Watt with Christine Nurse

 Murray 1200 the Poem

When Simon from East Geelong, climbed Wicheproof (all 30 metres high),
he surveyed the Western Plain. Get on a recumbent, or bicycle here, he thought with a wicked sigh,
and you could roll for many a mile, through Robinvale, Moulamien, Jerilderie
 and Beulah, Hopetoun, Durham Ox (though there's not much there to see)
and Dingee, Mitiamo, Rochester and Boort.
And so Murray 1200 was born.  Simon plotted fiendishly away
until several years later (to the very day)
The bravest Audax riders from all across the land lined up to ride
the plotted route with Garmin, GPS, cue cards and the odd map or two.
4 days later, it was all done and we crept exhausted to bed
and thought it the best and flattest garden path up which we'd all been led.

Note: Vinnie from Seattle finished the Audax Murray 1200 volunteer's ride and also writes poetry .