A new world record / What broke the bike? / Pet Bike

A healthy bike frame with bracing, made approximately to plans

Next Step for this bike is the seat.  The wooden bits and paint for the seat are laid out on the ground.

More of the new bike

Straws that broke the camel's back: a ramshackle group of videos.

And the camel's back.  Build your bikes to plan if you don't want this to happen

Tonight's work on the bike: Plastibond in the open frame ends.

There are a few ways to break a world record, and these are
a) be incredibly talented and willing to train and break a mainstream record and become famous or even more famous (ie your name is Usain Bolt) or
b) invent a new category of record, have a go at a "high achievement" in this field (longest underwater chess game, fastest over-90-average-age swim team then claim a record.  For most of us, "b)" is the only option, and it occurred to me the other day (when carrying about 30 VHS tapes back to the op shop on my recumbent bicycle) that I had some potential for  a "b)" record.  Unfortunately events overtook me and all thoughts of any sort of record were banished when I forgot to count the videos after my bike frame broke.

So why did the frame break?

Well there is the poetic but not true answer: 30 videos are really heavy and one of the following videos "Les Patterson has a stand-up", "The Big Lebowski", "Allegro Non Troppo", "American Flyers" or "Don's Party" was the straw that broke the camels back and caused the frame to bust.

Or something closer to the truth: After multiple cumulative insults, such as being plonked upon by an 85 kg bloke, going over bumps, being made from old bits of crap lying round the shed instead of the nice steel specified in the plans, the bike protested violently and was deciduous of one of its more vital pieces, a seatpost brace.  And losing such bits aint good, eventually you start to notice that things have fallen off and other things are bending when they shouldn't while you're riding.  But I made it home and still managed to drag off a fixie rider on the way.

So in the end, the frame breaking got me moving on making another bike (or Grandfather's axe / item whose various parts have been replaced over time such that nothing original remains) from the bits of the last one and a new frame from the shed.  There are a few photos of this 3/4 finished machine above.  Its quite liberating to have a near new bike and to be finishing another one.  With the new one I can muck around and try all sorts of new things like different crank lengths or fairings or replacing the rear triangle with really aerodynamic reinforced timber.   In the mould of the "Pet  Sounds" by the Beach Boys, I have a bike I can muck around with, a Pet Bike.

New Bike, New Name, New Flag

New and old Flags and Bike Names

Hi

This post is a reprise of an older ones, like this one which has a picture of a bike flag in it and relates to the naming of a bike.  So now I have a new bike whose story starts here.  And while idling away the hours riding it, a name for it started bubbling up through my subconscious.

Last few Names for Bicycles and (TaDaaaaa!) New name.

X15: Named after the Orange Coloured Paint it was painted with. Find it here.

Monarch: Based on the name of a random set of stickers I bought from Abbotsford cycles which started a very young tradition of naming my bikes with words beginning with "Mo", as in "Modular".

Moutarde: Begins with "Mo" and means mustard in French.  Mustard is both something that can be "hot /fast" as (in chilli) and shopped for. It is also a colour, quite close to the colour of the painted wood on my bike.  And any name in French can also be acquainted with "pretentious moron" in Australia.  So I'm going out on a limb here with this name, doing a balancing act, but anyway, long live the Moutarde!

Almost the only purpose for the flag is to promote this website so more people can find about the bike, my book etc. so its possible "modularbikes.com.au" should be a bit more prominent on the flag.

All for now! 

Steve "amateur advertiser" Nurse

Finishing off the bike & training

At Heyfield, 174k in to the "Gippsland Gambol 300k" 

Moon setting during "recovery ride" the next morning near Sale

Installing a Schlumpf drive.  This is the tool for putting a chamfer in the bottom bracket

A newly installed "about as techo as I get" Speedo

And about 8 3/4 hours later with an extra 200k on the clock.

Hi

Over the last few weeks I have been finishing off my recumbent bike by painting the steel bits, fitting a speedo, fitting a drink bottle holder, adding an extra bit to the boot lid, repainting some of the wooden seat assembly, removing the padding under my bum and installing a schlumpf mountain drive.   The bike looks good and goes well which is necessary!
In order to have a ghost of a a chance of finishing the GSR 1000 ride which is 1000 k over 3 days and 3 hours I have been training harder than I ever have.  For these distances, 200 k is just a warm up and 300k a training ride.  More on this later, but here are a few happy snaps!

Rear - View Visor

Mirror on the inside of a helmet visor

Front view of helmet with mirror

Back view of helmet

Side view.  The tilt of the mirror at the front has a big role in determining what you see.

Visor on a helmet on a newly repaired Dahon Boardwalk

Hi

This story started a while ago when I made an oversize visor for for my helmet.  The visor has since solved or improved the riding problems of rain in the eyes, sun glare and sunburn.

About 2 months ago I was riding from Airey's Inlet to Torquay and looking in my handlebar mounted mirrors. And it occured to me that a mirror on the inside of the visor could take the place of both left and right handlebar mirrors.  It took a while for me to do anything about this idea, it bubbled away till eventually I had a go at making something.  Old cd's and bike mirrors and corflute were cut up to mount on a visor but either the visual quality wasn't good or my cutting was bad and I gave up eventually.  Some research found the term "acrylic mirror" on this ( beer view mirror!) instructables page, and I started looking for a supplier and cutter of acrylic mirror.  And I found one in Australian Sheet Traders and ordered some rectangular acrylic mirror cut to size.

 The parts arrived on a Monday and  I wasn't very happy.  Mirror all blurry!  After emailing the supplier, one of their reps came round promptly and sorted things out.  It was just an extra protective film of plastic on the mirror surface.  So it was OK, and many thanks to David at AST, Christine and Ermi for sorting it out.

So now the mirror was built into a visor and it works!  A slight tilt of the head is all that's needed to see the road behind, there are no vulnerable "stalk mirrors" to manipulate and potentially get damaged, and there are no mirrors on the handlebars. In the setup I have at the moment, I can see my eyes in the centre of the mirror but it doesn't bother me.  I feel that building in adjustment to the tilt of the mirror relative to the helmet would improve things but I'm happy enough for now.

Next step is to find out if its been thought of before and the answer is a definite yes.  This link shows one similar patent and it looks to be fairly much the same idea.  One of the pictures is shown below.  So do I stop now?  No, I don't think so.  For the moment I will improve the mirror system for my own use and give away the mirror blanks to anyone who buys a cycling book from me, and maybe to ozhpv members as well.

A patent for a very similar idea exists.

There was a product that provides an integrated mirror in a bike helmet. The Reevu system uses mirrors to provide a rear-view using a sight-path above the riders head.  The manufacturer's web page (previous link) does not seem to be connected to the Reevu main page which concentrates on motorbike helmets. However a review here indicates that the writer has great enthusiasm for the product and hopes that the product will again be on sale "the year after next".( in 2009!)

Vizor-vu Visor for motorbike helmets.  "Sort of the same idea"

As well, the Vizor - Vu, shown at the bottom of the page here is something very similar.  It is designed for motorcycles and was most famously worn by Steve Mcqueen in the film "On any Sunday".

Others in Ozhpv have turned their thoughts to helmet visors as well  and this link provides a plan for a visor and the photos down the bottom of this page show Pete Heal and the visor in action.


Am very interested to hear your comments.  Are the explanations clear enough?

Regards

Steve Nurse

War of the Scales

Christine's Sculpture made from my op-shop purchased kitchen scales

Not to be outdone, this is my sculpture for the Melbourne Bienniale, whose theme this year is "Use of crappy things for weighing other things"

I am renowned for making "sculptures" from various stuff left on the kitchen table and my wife Christine has finally followed suit.  Was not about to be usurped and had to up the ante.

Regards

Stephen Nurse

Fixed Up Steerer bolt on Dahon Boardwalk

Bolt opened up

Seatpost and forks in place.

Original steering bolts

Quite a bit happening in the last week, I kept on repairing some bikes I got from ebay (including the Dahon shown above) and also enrolled in the 1000k Great Southern Randonee ride in October.  1000k in 75 hours! Quite obviously I have some serious training to do, but I've already started.  Something like 120k ridden on Sunday and already my "base load" training of a 70k round trip commute seems a bit easier because of it.  Latest recumbent going well, and I will report on upcoming rides.

Regards

Steve   

Fixing Some Bikes

Gumby and Pokey observe..... fixing a Repco family bike

Repco family bike on test ride

Dead Dahon

Damaged fork from Dahon with oversize thread - fork is bent backwards

Cut fork thread ready for brazing onto replacement fork.

Hi

Since Monday when 6 folding or shopper bikes arrived home in my small car, I've been fixing them up with no real goal in mind, one or two I might keep, I'll give others away, who knows, some might end up as resumbents.  The work on the bikes is quite rewarding, to get one of these bikes going takes 4-8 hours or so.  By way of contrast, my last from-the ground up recumbent took 7 months to build between designing, finding contractors, employing them and doing my stuff.  And its not even painted yet!  Although at certain stages I have culled stuff,  I still have quite a lot of old bike bits in the shed which makes it easy to work on bikes.

So here we go, a rough description of fixing some bikes.

Repco 24" Shopper

Bike had steel wheels and no brakes but servicable tyres.  A bike being kept for parts had 24" aluminium wheels but horrible tyres.   Swapped wheels, fitted a clutch to replace the rear cluster.  Cleaned chain.  Grovelled for servicable brakes and levers.  Fitted brakes last night in the kitchen while my wife watched "Silent Witness".  This morning I rode the bike down to the recycling depot with the denuded frame of the parts bike and left it there on the way to various op shops in the rain.  Good fun to ride a non-recumbent bike like this every now and then.

Dahon 20" Boardwalk Folder  

Not a bad bike and relatively recent but the seat and seatpost are missing and the front forks are bent backwards and unservicable.  Down the bottom of my pile of forks was a 20" fork that was ok with a bit of creative rearrangement of the threaded bit.  Have now painted the forks black and found a (bit of mild steel tube which will do as a) seatpost and seat so am well on the way to fixing this bike.  Will see how this bike goes, might keep this one and get rid of all my other folders.  To be continued....

Klapprad Culture not Dead

My Mazda 121 on return from Carrum Downs with 6 various folding and shopper Bikes

Just when I thought crappy folding (Klapprad) bike culture was dead, I used a Google Image Search on "Klapprad" to find this site which seeks to prove that folding bike culture is actually alive and that despite rumours to the contrary, Germans have a sense of humour. And a couple of clicks away is this site, dedicated to making a bike from an Ikea chair.

To keep my own personal exploration of folding bike culture going, on Sunday I bought 6 of them from "Darren's No Guts No Glory Auctions" through ebay.  Yesterday (Monday) I went down to pick them up.  I was somewhat unprepared but Darren helped me out and gave me a rope to tie down the boot on the frame of a Ricardo shopping bike, and somehow everything was jammed in. (Thanks Darren)  But wait!  When I got back in the car, one of the bikes was getting in the way of the gearstick so I had to do some rearrangements.  Eventually got on the way, no incidents on the way home.  An inventory revealed 2 Repcos, A Ricardo shopper, a slightly battered Dahon, a Toyosha and a Malvern Star shopper.  A similar, older post about buying bikes is here and a recent photo of the National bike I bought back then is here.

Fortunately we have misplaced the key to the side door so my wife Christine can't open it.  If we had a key, any attempt to open it would fail, there are lots of old bikes stacked up there.  Hopefully it is not all one-way traffic, I have this folding and this recumbent bike on ebay now.  So c'mon, help keep the love moving and bid!

All for now, Steve