Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Crank Forward #1 handlebar/gooseneck revision




My home built collapsable crank forward bike has been proving to be very comfortable and enjoyable riding over the last couple years and over 2000 miles. One area of improvement I wanted to explore was abilitly to stand while pedaling. My handlebar and gooseneck setup gave good comfort and stability but there was not sufficient clearance for my knees to clear the bars while standing on the pedals (see before picture above). I had a pair of Rans B38 bars laying around http://www.shoprans.com/proddetail.asp?prod=BPHB0038 and I decided these could be located for good comfort and standing ability if they had a tall riser with very little forward offset, much like Rans uses on their Crank Forward bikes. The resulting home built gooseneck was made from brazing some 1-1/4" steel bike tubing onto a lower section of steel goosenck and then gluing in a piece from the top of a heavy duty aluminum gooseneck at the upper end using JB Weld and a couple 1/4" set screws for added security. The result shows a lot of promise from what testing I've been able to do so far. I'll do more field testing once the half foot of snow we have here in KC goes away.