Random Musings > Skip Bike and Bodge It

Recumbent trike (hopefully folding)

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DuncanM:
I've wanted a Windcheetah ever since I saw one in the Richards Bicycle book aged 10 or something!
Then at the start of this year I discovered AtomicZombie, and started on the process of building a StreetFox (but with disk brakes, 20" rear wheel, and a few extra modifications, including a fold in the middle). This isn't necessarily a "bodge", but there are a few along the way! I'll update this thread with my progress so far - I've not completed it yet, but I've made a lot of progress!
This is what it's supposed to look like when done:


This is what I started with - the bikes in the top photo were knackered and free, but the suspension bike cost a whole £15:
20150114_185607 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
20150118_183431 by duncancmartin, on Flickr

So, off came the rear triangle - this will be used almost entirely as is.
20150124_124346 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
But the rest of the frames didn't survive so unscathed - here are the headtubes and the pivot for the rear triangle (angle grinders are great!):
20150124_141729 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
And here they are all cleaned up with the chopped up forks to go with them:
20150125_135603 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
At this point, I decided (don't know why) that I needed significantly more travel than could be provided by the crappy shock that was on the kids bike, so this arrived:
20150124_160615 by duncancmartin, on Flickr

And then it was time to do more than buy things and chop them up!
More to come......

DuncanM:
I also got myself some BMX wheels for the front ones - lots of spokes, 14mm axles to stop them bending when held on one side, and both rear wheels so I can screw a brake disk adapter on.
20150127_183729 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
Box section steel - 1.6mm wall, 40mm square. I got 6m, and I think it was about 40 quid! I ended up using a little under 3m, so I've got enough to make another if I want! I used a holesaw to cut the end of this one so that I can weld in the pivot for the rear triangle. Originally I actually just made a hole with steel at the end so it was extra sturdy, but when I put the pivot point in the hole I didn't have enough clearance at the back for the triangle to attach! So I binned that idea and just did it the way the plans said, relying on the welds to hold...
20150221_105332 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
Held in place so that it can be welded in properly...
20150221_105420 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
Ugly (but sturdy) welding:
20150221_115344 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
20150221_120606 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
Cleaned up a bit on the grinder:
20150221_121715 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
Here's the suspension mounting plates that I chopped off the donor bike:
20150222_162303 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
Then they got welded on (after guessing exactly where they should go so that the seat back wouldn't foul he shock)
20150228_165219 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
And here's them and the pivot point in use.
20150228_170658 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
This was all done by the end of February, so that was actually reasonable progress so far. Then things slowed down a bit...

DuncanM:
The next bit of the process is to create and attach the backrest:
20150301_161152 by duncancmartin, on Flickr

At this point I realised that the threads on my wheels would be rotating in opposite directions, so if I attached a screw on brake disk mount to the right hand one it would unscrew whenever I tried to brake! After a little thought I figured I'd just bolt the screw on addapter to the hub, so I drilled these holes:
20150328_144304 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
And bolted the disk and screw on adapter through them:
20150328_172102 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
I wasn't convinced that this would be effective, but it's been done on other AZ trikes, and apparently it works. There's some threadlock on the threads, and it's done up really tight, so this is more belt and braces than seriously stressed bolts, but we'll have to wait and see how well it stays put...
I also got some 15mm (x 50m) bar, and then drilled 14mm holes for the axles to go through:
20150228_165118 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
Here's the practise go I had at welding the spare one onto a chopped  remnant of the fork crown.  This bit was quite tricky to get the angle good, and also it's a really stressed weld, between a 15mm bar and a pretty chunky bike part (the wall sizes were probably 5mm thick). I turned the welder up to power setting of 7 (out of 8), and bashed the hell out of the test piece. I managed to hold the bar in the vice and hit the fork crown so hard that I bent the 15mm thick bar (without breaking the weld)!
20150314_122412 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
More to come in a bit when my laptop is charged!
Cheers
Duncan

Wobbly John:
 :thumbsup:

woollypigs:
This looks fun :)

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