Crank Forward Number 3

The no weld crank forward was fairly successful but I decided to try perfecting the bike with some cutting and brazing. The original bike was an old High Sierra Schwinn mountain bike. One of the more serious shortcomings of this rendering of the bike was its tendency to pop wheelies on takeoff. The seat sits almost over the rear axle. The bike did not handle badly but I figured sooner or later I would forget which bike I was on and end up being dumped on the pavement.

My plan was to stick pretty close to dimensions on one of RANS new models they offer taller riders called the Sequoia ( http://www.ransbikes.com/Sequoia.htm ). Wheelbase on crank forward number 3 came out 53". It is very stable and comfortable. I'm still messing with the handlebar setup--I have a set of RANS B38 bars I may try on it. I plan to paint it dark green similar to the original mountain bike's color--the fork will probably not get repainted at all.

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Crank forward bikes are considerably simpler to build than recumbent bikes as the origingal steering angle and bottom bracket position can be retained thus eliminating fork bending and cutting on the down tube. Basically the seat ends up about 6 or 8 inches back and the chain stays are extended about 7". I keep about 5" of the old seat post for mounting a front derailler and attach a new seat tube to the base of the old one and angle it back at something closer to 50 degrees rather than the original 70 degrees. Mountain bikes seem to be better suited to conversion into crank forwards but I think an old road bike could be cut up for this purpose. Crank Forward bikes make great commuter bikes and city cruisers whereas recumbents are probably a better choice for longer road trips.

crank forward 2 shrink job

The second crank forward bike I built sat around mostly unused for several months and I decided to resize it for my wife to ride. The good part of this is that it took very little in new materials / cost and not too much work. Here is the bike before and after shrinking. I took a couple inches off the wheelbase as well as dropping the seat tube from around 23" to about 17".

Kiddie crank forward

Here is what a crank forward bike might look like as a basic Huffy type kid's bike:

I added about 4 inches to the rear triangle and laid the seat post back. Small riders can touch the ground pretty good with their feet and still get good leg extension on the pedals.

Number 4 refresh

Homebuilt recumbent number 4 came back in trade a few weeks back. With 18,000 miles on the frame it was about due for some serious restoration. Here it is with newly redone seat and paint and complete tune up...

Home made cruiser bars for MB crank forward conversion bike

My old Schwinn High Sierra mountain bike has been dusted off and become the object of some tinkering in hopes of creating a more comfortable bike without frame cutting or welding. Farther down this page are pictures of the old mountain bike with the repositioned home build fat comfort saddle in place and some cut off road bike drop bars. What the bike seemed to need yet was a better pair of laid back cruiser bars. I had and old pair of BMX handle bars with a wide straigh across design that I did some cutting and brazing on. The result is a pair of very comfortable bars that fit in well with the cruiser style of riding. I rode this bike 12 miles this morning and found it to be very comfortable and good handling--to a point. Wheelies in the lower gears are extremely easy to pull and care must be exercised when climbing steep grades to stay leaned forward far enough to keep the front wheel on the ground.

Recycled bicycles

Old bikes laying in wait for bulky item pickup by the city are difficult to leave well enough alone. Sometimes they follow along beside me on my bike and occasionally I find more than one and have to return with the van to round them up. The last three trash bike finds involved pairs of bikes. Usually 2 trash bikes will equal one finished recycled bike, a few spare parts, and a smaller pile of parts for the next trash pick up. My fleet of 20" kid bikes has now grown to 5 rideable bikes. They just sit there waiting for grandkids to come visit them.

No weld crank forward conversion part 2

Here is the other part of my mtb to CF confersion. Have about 10" riser under a pair of truncated 44cm wide drop bars. A quick test ride (of about 17 seconds) out in the dark street at 25 degrees f. shows the bike may have real promise as a comfort bike. Not nearly as laid back as CF2 or CF1 (farther down this page) but it has much more relaxed feel than the old mtb had and a person can easily stand on the pedals if one wishes to do so. Obviously, more testing is in order. One improvement I could make is in the steering riser as it is a very heavy part and could be redone in thin wall Cr-mo to knock off a pound or 2.

No weld crank forward conversion from mountain bike

Here is my old Schwinn High Sierra mountain bike. (I know, the drop bars look more like road bike....) This bike has been mostly collecting dust since I started building and riding recumbent and crank forward bikes. I plan to try making a sort of crank forward bike out of this by putting a big fat C.F. style saddle back about 5" from the current location.





Here is the old saddle and the new seat pan.















Here is the new seat with struts supporting the back portion.



Here is how the back part of this conversion will look. The seat can be adjusted for height with the quick release lever as usual at the base of the seat post. The struts supporting the back of the seat have holes drilled through which hairpin type clips are used to adjust the tilt angle.

The next step is to bring the handle bars up higher and farther back for easier reach. Stay tuned...

Tweaking crank forward #1

My first crank forward and only folding (or should I say collapsable?) bike had a road fork and a 26x1.75" tire up front with a 26x2" in back. One of the junk bikes in the basement had a nice fat mountain bike fork so I painted that and replaced the skinny road fork and the medium sized tire with the wide fork and a nice fat tire. I liked the new arrangement so well I started thinking I might put a triple crank (22 32 42) on this bike and give it even better off road ability. The rear brake cable and rear derailler cable on this bike have home built disconnects for when the frame is spit in two for transporting so I made up another disconnect for the front derailler when it is added. Here are a picture of the pieces and of the cable as connected.

Long Wheelbase or short?

When I first started building and riding recumbent bikes I thought short wheelbase was the way to go. Short wheelbase bikes are easier to transport and have much quicker steering response. But I was curious about claims of more comfort and better positioning for hill climbing on long wheelbase recumbents and decided to build recumbent number 3 as a LWB.

Number 3 is the blue bike above. I liked the ride of the LWB almost immediately. Very easy learning curve and I felt like it was more comfortable and easier to master hills with. Number 3 was made from an old Schwinn hi-tensile steel bike and some electrical conduit (not real high tech stuff) but I was ready to part with my entire short wheelbase fleet of 3 bikes within a few months. I decided to build number 4 (shown above right) using the same basic Tour Easy design http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/plans/plans1.htm but using a Cro-moly Schwinn World Sport ($5 from a neighbor's garage sale) and good thinwall Cro-moly tubing from the local aircraft supply store. Number 4 was a good 4 lbs lighter than number 3 and is a wonderful touring machine. I kept number 4 for several years until number 11 proved to be a fit replacement. A friend now owns number 4 and still rides it on the streets of Kansas City.

This is where I started this bike building stuff back in 1998 with home built short wheelbase 26x20 recumbent--sort of a muffler pipe version of a Rans V-rex. http://www.ransbikes.com/VREX07.htm This bike was pretty heavy but tracked very well right from the start. I had never ridden a recumbent more than across a bike shop parking lot when this bike was completed so I learned to ride a recumbent while testing this bike. It was almost as much fun as learing to ride my first bike at age 6 but without the harsh landing in a pear tree this time!

Within a few months I started build my second recumbent, this time a 20x20 short wheelbase model. This one used a BMX bike as a starting point with a little muffler pipe brazed onto the head tube for the crank to mount on. The crankset is mounted on a sliding tube that fits over the boom that is attached to the head tube. This bike was lighter the the first one I built and also handled quite well but was a bit short in the wheelbase so that a large bump encountered going up a steep hill could result in lofting the front wheel skyward. I felt like this was about as good as I was going to get with the short wheelbase design and bought a factory built Rans Rocket next. http://www.ransbikes.com/Rocket07.htm

Searching for better bicycle designs

Here are some bikes I've built from parts of existing bikes. I started with a short wheelbase recumbent and eventually built 13 recumbent bikes and a couple of crank forward bikes.

This is my current favorite touring bike--my 11th homebuilt recumbent. It is sort of an Easy Racers Tour Easy clone. It has a 27" rear wheel and a 406 type 20" front and a 2 x 7 derailler transmission. This bike started life as a Centurian road bike my neighbor donated and is very smooth and comfortable. I built a couple of long wheelbase recumbents since this one for other people but I feel like this one represents about the best I can do for now with existing methods and materials I can comfortably work with.

My latest projects have been home built crank forward bikes.

My first c.f. was made frome and old Araya road bike and pieces of a Performance road bike. I decided to make it a collapsible bike after I had it in rideable form. Here are pictures of it:

This bike fits into the trunk of my Hyundai Elantra very nicely once I break the frame in two sections and pull the seat and front wheel.

My second effort at home built crank forward involved an old Schwinn LeTour and I laid the seat post farther back and angled the head tube back to about 60 degrees to improve steering response:

Here is CF #2 on the brazing jig. The seat tube and long sections of chain stays are new 4130 cro-mo tubing from AirParts here in Kansas City. http://www.airpartsinc.com/

Here is a look at the seat pan in construcion and a shot of the finished bike. It is very comfortable but not very fast down hill or into the wind compared to a recumbent but is ideal for short trips to the store etc.