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...