Current collection of bikes

This is my 11th homemade recumbent out of 13 I built and is my primary bike now.  It is approaching 27000 miles.  The 4th recumbent I built also had about 27000 miles on it when I sold it and it is still going under a new owner. 

 I also ride 2 home built crank forward bikes which I featured in earlier posts, one based on a Huffy mountain bike and one that disassembles for transporting in a car trunk. 

This is the ninth recumbent I built and I sometimes

use it when my number 11 recumbent

 is down for maintenance.

This is a Sanyo E-bike we bought about a year back for the wife to ride but she hasn't ridden it much.

I have 6 kid bikes that get occasional use by visiting grand kids.

Crank Forward number 7

Crank forward number 7 is based on a Huffy mountain bike frame. I think I picked this frame out of a junk pile but if I bought it I didn't pay more than $5 for it. My first plan was to make a cheap single speed campus bike and try to make a small return for my work by selling it on Craig's list. I wanted to try a little less offset of the seat to bottom bracket than my previous CF bike to improve hill climbing and stand up pedaling. The resulting frame has a wheelbase of 46 ", rear stays at 22" and a seat tube angle of 56 degrees. There is still enough crank forward to get both feet on the ground with proper leg-to-pedal adjustment but just barely. The resulting bike seems pretty responsive for a cheap iron Huffy. The rear triangle is short enough that the front wheel is pretty easy to loft making for good curb hopping as a city bike. I had the original single speed gearing set at about 50" by using a cluster with a 20 tooth gear and a chainring of 39 teeth. I liked riding this bike so well I decided to see how it would do with a wide ratio 5 speed setup. I used an old suntour 14-32 cluster and kept the 39 tooth chainring and the result is 5 very usable gears.

I used the wire welder in building the handlebar riser and seat post mountings as well as for tacking small parts in place for brazing. The .035" self fluxing wire would be too much for a nice thinwall Cro-Mo bike but the old Huffy frame is pretty good for mig welding practice. I used dollar Wal-Mart flat black paint on the frame and the result is pretty good for so little prep work. I like being able to go back and touch up spots where I've added braze-ons without having to repaint the whole frame. Sadly, our local Wal-Mart doesn't seem to be carying the dollar paint in flat colors any more.

My next project may be to make a fold down version of the handlebar riser so the bike will fit easier into my van. I'm thinking that if it folded forward, you could turn the front wheel back and the whole bike would fit on a city bus rack like a standard 26" cruiser bike. Then, maybe add a couple hinges to the frame and make it fit into a compact car trunk like CF1 does...

Cargo Handling on a bike

Here are a couple of cheap solutions for hauling stuff. On the recumbent I a common milk crate can be attached to the rear rack for hauling things. This works well for carrying oil jugs, gas cans, groceries, or materials for recyling. This picture shows the crate attached to my 20x20 LWB homebuilt recumbent using 2 toestraps at top front and a bungee cord across the bottom.

Folks with Rans 'bents that have highback seats can carry things pretty good in plastic grocery bags tied to the top crossbar of the seatback.

I like to use a crank forward for short errands around town and for this I usually use a cloth shopping bag with about 20" of nylon tent rope to connect the handles to the other side of the rear rack. I leave the piece of rope attached to one handle and when its ready to load on the bike I take a loop around the second handle ane hook the 2 loop ends onto the lower hooks of the rear rack.

This system is works pretty well for carrying 5 qt. oil jugs, library books, or groceries. One caveat here; if the bag is not filled very full, it has a tendancy to rub on the rear wheel--this could cause real trouble if it gets mixed up in the back wheel so some experimenting with the load before getting up to speed is strongly recommended. If I don't have much stuff to carry, I just bungee the bag on top of the rack. This bag system has two strong points; price ($1.00 per grocery bag) and it doesn't weigh much or take up much room when not in use.

Three dollar crank forward

A couple months

back I stopped at a garage sale that had a couple mountain bikes leaning against a tree. They had no prices posted--one was a dimestore clunker with 24" wheels and one was an old Trek 26" mountain bike. I got brave and asked how much for the Trek and the lady said $6 would buy both but I managed to take home only Trek for $3.00. I figured the bike would be in sorry shape as rusty water ran out of the frame when I loaded it into my van but when I tore things down I found all the bearings in good shape, needing only a good lube job. The shifters seemed to work pretty slick--they are a 3x7 trigger shift system and all rust cleaned off pretty easy. The tires have no noticable wear, so I decided to turn this bike into a crank forward cruiser by moving the rear wheel and seat back about 7 inches. Most of the added tubing is .035w 4130 Cro-mo 1" OD from Aircraft Spruce http://www.aircraftspruce.com/index.html and Airparts http://www.airpartsinc.com/ .
The seatpost is 1" square 1/8" wall aluminum tube.

Total investment is still under $100 with brazing gas and tubing counted. The finished bike weighs about 30 lbs and is a great ride. I put about 60 miles on in the first week or so even though our daytime high temps have seldom exceeded the freezing point here in KC. I'll tear the bike down and paint the bare parts black to match the rest as soon as the next snowstorm forces me to stay inside for a couple days.

Update 12/26/2010: I finished painting and reassembling the bike today and added the 2 new pictures above. I kept the old paint on the front half of the frame and just repainted the back half. I also added 1.5" in length to the handle bar ends by making some bar plugs out of dowel rod and aluminum tubing.

Motor bike idler re-design

The idler kit for these cheap motorbike kits is pretty lame. Notice the clamp that grabs the chainstay and the slot the idler pully has to move up to tension the chain. This setup seems to let the chain loosen up after about 5 minutes of riding time. The nylon pulley is probably not nearly as satisfactory as an idler sprocket would be but that upgrade will have to wait for later. My current effort has been centered around the mounting and adjustment portions of the idler system.

Here is what I came up with. The new unit uses a swing arm pivoted from the bottom rather than a slot for moving the pully against the chain. Note the welded on tab on the chainstay and on the seatstay where an adjustment screw can be hand tightend and then locked with a wingnut to pull the chain into the desired tension. I'm thinking that having the tensioner setable without tools will enable the chain to be removed from the sprocket out on the road, making the bike much easier to roll back home should the motor quit (hope for the best, plan for the worst).

4 stroke bike

This project came about when my son sent me home with a bike motor kit and asked me to turn it into a motorbike. The motor is a 48cc 4-cycle with centrifugal automatic clutch. A friend gave me an old Phillips 3 speed frame and I had a heavy duty fork in the shop as well as some steel 26" wheels and some extra tires. The motor is fairly smooth and quiet and pulls up hills pretty good, which is fortunate as there was not room enough for pedals to be installed. The gearbox generates some whine and the chain idler will need some improvement but the finished product shows promise as a fun little motor bike.

Home built AMF Crank Forward

I wanted to try building an inexpensive crank forward so I started with an old AMF single speed bike that had little wear on in but needed some TLC to be ready to ride. I straightened the fork a little and trued up the wheels and adjusted everything to get the bike rideable and then tore it down and cut up the frame and added 4" of length to the chain stays and put in a fatter seat tube and seat post at a more laid back angle and added a piece of tubing across the top of the frame to stiffen it. I built a larger saddle and put on some pull back handlebars to give the crank forward type comfort. I reduced the gearing to about 50" by replacing the front sprocket with a 36 tooth sprocket. I'm too tall to fit on this bike properly but it is much more pleasant to ride than the original was.

Cost of this project was probably under $40 counting paint and brazing supplies.

cheap bike light

LED lights have popped up all over the market place and I recently saw some very nifty little flashlights at Advance Auto stores for $2.50 each. These guys come with 3 AAA penlight batteries and put out an amazing amount of light. I've been thinking these would make nice bike lights if you could come up with a simple and light weight means to attach them to your bicycle. I prefer a system that allows the light to be easily attached and removed and still allow the light to be carried in your pocket or bike bag.

I decided to make a saddle to attach to the light that would let it sit on the handle bar and use rubber bands to hold the light to the bars.

The saddle is made from a couple scraps of 1" diameter thinwall bike tubing. I used a section about 1/2" long and cut that ring of steel into thirds. I welded 2 of these little arcs of steel together using my mig welder mostly because I wanted to practice using the welder. I think you could use aluminum tubing from lawn chairs or PVC pipe or most any material and glue the pieces back to back with epoxy glue such as JB Weld. The joint strength here probably doesn't need to be very high as this saddle just keeps the light pointing straight ahead. When the saddle was welded together I glued one side of it to the flashlight using double sided tape and also used double sided tape to attach a little rectangle of inner tube rubber to the other surface to give padding and traction where the saddle contacts the bars.

Here is a shot of the light strapped onto the bars using a couple small rubber bands cut from inner tube.

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.

Crank forward number 3 revision A

Crank forward number 3 was a very comfortable cruiser bike but the wheelbase, at 53", was a bit long and the front end a bit heavy for off roading and curb jumping. I decided to copy the geometry of the back portion of my first CF bike and drop 2" from the rear triangle length giving a new wheelbase of 51".

The result was very satifactory and the bike handles very nicely. I can stand up on it pretty good for hill climbing. Note the rear brake yoke cable routing due to lack of clearance behind seat post.

Crank Forward Number 3 painted

Got the painting done on CF3. I retained the original paint on the fork and most of the downtube in order to preserve some of the Schwinn decals and the original paint is much more durable than the Duplicolor touchup I used on the rest.

Here is detail on the seatpost. Note I borrowed the idea from Rans for marking the inseam measurements.

This bike is very smooth riding and quite comfortable. With the 53 inch wheelbase it seems slower handling the my first crank forward bike that has a 50 inch wheelbase but I doubt that there is much difference in speed as weight and tire styles are similar on the two.

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.