Bikes and Beer at Brunswick

Retro-Motorbike inspired e-bike.

Mine was not the only leaning trike,

these 2 dragsters tyrned up but I didn't see them ridden.

My Leaning Trike

Dragster Leaner

Gayle & TJ

Mike, Gayle, TJ

Start of the lowest gear race....

Which included these 2 dragon bikes.

Mike and Gayle battle it out for bragging rights.

Dragon Bikes

My son Ewan, Phoebe in background in red.

Just about every novelty bike competing in the novelty races got a prize. Including mine!  I passed the socks I'd won on to Ewan & Phoebe.

The prize I actually won was a scarf, but I swapped it for the socks this young lady won.

Ewan in the slow race (Flouro helmet)

Small circle race, Penny Farthing hanging in there.

Tandem triplet girls.

A rush on raffle tickets followed some spruiking by Gayle and Kirsteen.

This was the original start line for the skid competition, the start line....

Was later moved back to here.

Raffle presentations with Gayle and Kirsteen

Triple was very ably ridden, even at low speed.

Hi

Today was the the first "Bikes and Beers" festival, part of Good Beer Week .  The bike charity I help, Wecycle had a stall there to recruit volunteers. Kirsteen provided the food on the stall and there were several bikes of the sort we repair and give away on display.  One small bike was hooned on and even ridden on by adult riders, and was sold right at the end of the day.  A pleasant day had by all I think, especially some of the organisers who were fuelled up by some of the sponsors product and were singing along to the Dad rock (We are the Champions, Queen, Horses, Darryl Braithwaite etc.) with great gusto by the end. Thanks to all the organisers & volunteers, Regards

Steve Nurse

Mule Train Bike

Latest bike rolling off the production line is the "Mule Train" which

.......started with this bike (already much abused, see here for example)

....and is named after the (also an antiquated form of transport) curve Bikes Clydesdale Cargo Fork.

Everything on the bike sofar is made from bits in the shed. This shows the main cantilever beam end (centre), the green support bar, and a bolt that was turned down to go into the green bar.

This is another pair of bolts, one already modified, they were later brazed to the frame,

....as shown here

..... and here.

Jigging to drill the support bar.

Hi, here are a few pics of my latest project, the Mule Train.  I had seen a few pictures of "Clydesdale" bikes, but couldn't find much about them, and then after I had started on this, discovered them to be based on the Clydesdale Cargo fork from Crust Cycles.  Anyway, I've built a version on this bike before which I had forgotten about, and a couple of others as well. I will report further as the project continues.

Regards  Steve Nurse

Death of a Pair of Trousers

Sam had painted the bunk bed seat out the front, which led to

this......

and this.....

and this trike being painted.

How the trike works, video of the same trike style is here.

Tailbox detail.

Back view

Ventisit screwed down. The screw and washer are grey, and just visible through the mesh.  But the screw poked out the other side which....

ripped my already slightly old....

pair of trousers but......

inadvertently started a new fashion trend.

Sharp bits of screws removed with angle grinder (circled in blue)

Hi

A few weeks ago, our painter Sam made a good job of varnishing the seat I had made out of a bunk bed. She'd sanded it, then painted it 3 times with varnish, and it went from a dull to gleaming over the course of a few days.  This painting set such a good example that the condition of other bits of timber (including one of my trikes) around the joint became embarrassing.  On one of my excursions I bought the same type of varnish from a nearby paint shop, and then set about painting things, first the table out the front, then a trolley out the back, and finally one of my trikes.

The trike involved a bit of a switcheroo, I stole a tailbox lid from a kit I haven't built up yet, swapped an all-wooden seat over to a trike with a wooden steerer, and also took things apart so I could paint them properly.  This included the Ventisit / ACS10 seat pad.  When I put the seat pad back, I hid some of the holding screws under the Ventisit, and unfortunately, this meant a bit of screw poked out the bottom.

Yes, the sharp bit!  And when riding the next day, I accidentally started a new fashion trend, ripping some jeans tears at the back below the knee.  This was caused by getting on and off the bike and scraping the pants with the pointy end of the screw.

Now a tear-at the-back-of-jeans-above-the-knee had its moment in the sun at some of last years fashion parades, but that faded quite quickly.  However, I am sure the rip-at-the-back-of-jeans-below-the-knee thing will come into style, and endure like the black T-shirt, the pink sock and the desert boot.

So the ripped jeans might be fixed and reserved for the mankiest of jobs, or become a rag, and I fixed the bottom of the bike seat by removing the sharp bits with an angle grinder so no more jeans will be ripped and die, and really I'm not totally into fashion!

Regards

Steve Nurse

Head tube cap

Specialized cap as fitted to my son's mountain bike.

New equivalent through ebay.  The cables fit through, that is a good start.

Old version...

was taken apart revealing the modded star nut.

Messing around with cables.

New top cap, and my home modded version.

Test ride, it works!

The whole trike

Hi

In some ways I'm not up to date with bikes, and a few weeks ago I saw my son and daughter-in-laws 1 x 11 mountain bike.  This had a few features I'd never seen live on a bike, like thru bolts on wheels, and a "star type" head tube top cap.  The star cap made the whole headset area hollow and liable to get gunk in, and maybe not advisable in a mountain bike.  But maybe there was some saving of weight involved, I'm not sure.  Anyway, for my trike where I have the cables running through the fork tube, the Specialized type top cap looked good, and with my son's help found some of them on ebay.  There was another type (six holes) as well as the Specialized type (five holes), and I opted for the 6 hole type.

Anyway, today they arrived, and I got onto fitting one to a bike, and it all went well after all the work threading cables.  The new headset top cap works well and looks good and is something professionally made that does the job.  Woohhoo!

New trike on the road

Setup for changed seat post

Marking up the new seatpost

Sawing the new seatpost

Seatpost mostly finished

Bike mostly finished,

And after a few test runs

Front view

Seat mount detail

After a blocky, photo Christine Nurse

Hi

A few months after receiving some parts from Emona , I have finished the bike they were intended for, at least for the time being.  In the last week, I have replaced the first have-a-go seatpost with a new one, slightly longer and sloping to the back more to be more in compression than the previous one.  I started by chocking up the seat with a bit of frame material which was about the right amount from my estimates to put it on the right slope.  I measured up a new seatpost from that setup, then drilled, sawed and filed it out. 

And its all done now making my count of running bikes of this type 3, or about 1 too many for me to have.  2 is fine, I can be modding one while the other is still on the road.

The carbon fibre prints are great, but the design isn't perfect, and there are a few angles, features and distances to adjust.  If I redid the parts, it might be made with glass fibre, not carbon fibre, that could  be cheaper and still strong enough. I see these parts as a bit of a crack to ways of supporting hardshell seats on rectangular frames, and I might have a go at making a mount using some metal parts and my home 3d printer.

Meanwhile a bit of pootling on the internet has found whole bike frames being made using this carbon fibre printing method.  The world is a new place.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Helmet Parts on Thingiverse

Hi, as detailed in my last post, stl files allowing printing of parts of the (yet to be snappily named) Helmet Mirror Visor are available here on Thingiverse.

Regards

Steve nurse