Big Wheel finished (kinda)

Bad Ass Melody

found this pic on the excelent http://wilsonbrothers.wordpress.com/page/1/ blog
i absloutely love this thing havent been able to find anything out about it tracked down the speed shop it came from but the site is all in japanese , but i can tell you its based on a honda melody, Geuss whos been trawling flebay for a melody?

Honda Fat Cat Big Wheel

Got the rear wheel fitted its the front wheel from a KLX trike just need to hook up the drum, also got longer shocks from a Benelli Velvet scooter fitted, and you can see here the ccut'nshut exhaust i took 1" out of the down pipes and about a foot out of the motad silencer may of lost one or to baffels in the process, buit it was running very rich so its medicinal.

lso pictured is the front wheel from a trx trike complete with disc, ive got a nice little brembo scotter caliper to go with it, just need som 9" wide yokes.

Quick Bike Build

This one realy is quick , my littlest nephew is in desprate need of a new bike, so a quick look on fleaBay and £5, i was the owner of this 20"wheel girls bike, picked it up yeasterday from plymouth tied it to the back of the K1100,

quick work with the grinder and tig and a splash of paint and its looking pretty good.

precison instrument

Radical Surgery

Heres the widedend swing arm back on the bike now just need to make a new hub and sprocket carrier.


Extending the spindell.

Honda Big Wheel

Been striping down the CD binning everything not needed (pile in top left) and here is the new wheel ,going to be a tight squeeze!

Fat Tyred Farm Bike

Fat Tyred Farm Bike
feeling that i didnt have nearly enough projects on the go heres my new one im going to fit quad bike wheels and tires to it to turn it into a farm utility/fun bike including a trailer hitch.

English Wheel & Bandsaw

I will need a metal cutting bandsaw to cut out the shapes from the 3mm 5083 aluminum sheet, i already have a wood cutting bandsaw the only difference being the blade speed, so all i need do is gear down the blade to about 1/3rd the speed so im going to cast up a bigger pully to slip over the original fit a longer belt and a metal cutting blade and its job done.

for the next stage of the build i will need the english wheel and a metal cutting bandsaw, so as privously mentioned i will be makeing a wheeling machine from the frame of an old potters wheel im planing on useing the brake drum and stub axel from a Saab 96 pictured.

Troublesome Jack Shaft

fingers crossed this is all but finished bearings are pressed in oil seals fitted just needs the bolts trimming and the nuts tightened, it seems to spin nice and true , Im not that happy with it as it is very tight clerances, When the sprockets ware out i will re engineer it and hopefully do a much better job, But for now its good enough.

Progress!

Havent been posting much as have been realy raly busy with the day job, But have made some progress the titanum down pipes are all but done just need to fabricate collector (that was so easy to type!)

AC DC Tig

splashed out on a new and very cheap chinese Tig welder as my geougeous IFL tig is only DC so wont weld Ali, and since the body work is going to be alloy and now the chassis as well ther was no choice this machine cost less than hireing a Tig for 2 weeks, so far ive only used it on DC but it works lovely

Jack Shaft update

Here is the jack shaft thers already a deep grove bearing pressed into the center section, and the 2 needle rollers and then the oil seals will go in each end.

lipo

The future for motorcycles?

JAP single

More Anodiseing

Heres my 2nd attempt it was suposed to be bronze/brown as you can see it is not more an iridesent charcole gray, not unpleasent but not what i want!.
Ill try again.

All the way from Kansas

My lovely Buell perimeter disc pictured here in the goldwing rim.This is the perfect solution to my front brakeing needs as i cant have twin disks, Ill have one big one!
I brought this on USA ebay , it only took a week to arive and even with shipping it was way cheaper than the comedy prices UK breakers charge for Buell bits, I have a caliper on the way from the US to which was less than half the price incuding P&P than from a uk breaker.

Home Anodeiseing

Here iam trying to anodeise the jack shaft, its in a bath of sulphuric acide with 12v being past through it, forming hydrogen at the lead cathode and oxygen at the aluminum anode wich combines with the aluminum to form aluminum oxide, accept it didnt as when i put it in the dye tank it picked up no colour , The reason i now sumise is that the acid was way to dilute,
Ive got some stronger now and will try again.

Finite Ellement Analasis (on the cheap)

Thinking about the rear SA and testing the structures the old school way, make a model from balsa and see how much it flexes this is a really good exercise for gaining an understanding of structures, as you can feel exactly how much difference each tube makes.

Titanium Down Pipes

Ive also done some more work on the exhaust this is all going very well, you can see on the table bellow parts cut ready to weld.

I did spend way to long trying to make up some Ti exhaust clamps untill sence prevailed and i just cut of the SS ones from the ER6 down pipes. I built up the middle sections with weld to reinforce them as ther subject to a bending load the didnt originaly have being welded to the pipes.

Magic Casting potions

Components for a tube bender.

Example of pourosity
Been a bit lacks in posting lately as ive been dishartend by my seeming lack of actualy progress, but none the less have still been busy, The firwst couple of Aluminum pours surfeed serious amounts of porosity this is a casting fault caused by gas bubbles result a honeycomb effect not good for structural intergrty, The solution is to use a cover flux and a Degasser, the flux forms a lid on the metal keeping out oxygen and the degasser removes hydrogen fromt the melt just befoer pouring, I also used a grain refiner which keeps the grain nice and small, which is stronger and improves responce to heat treatment.

Whilst i was casting i also made the parts for a tube bender as this might come in useful later on in the build.

Im going to make a basic compression bender and fill the tubes, if that is not sucsefull ive designed it so it could be a draw bender too.

Sprokets and holes

been a tough and dishartening week, hoped to have the jack sahaft done and made a start on the SA by now as it is ive finaly maged to drill the 16 holes in the 2 sprockets! still that is progress can assemble the jack shaft at last, whilst waiting for parts ive been building the above recumbent trike for my nephews, but need to sort out some brakes before i let them lose as thers lots of hills here and this thing is fast!

English Wheels from farm yard scrap

couple of bits of esentialy scrap laying around out side top photo is an old center shaft belt drive i think, and above is the transmisson of a potters wheel, thourght the cast iron wheel would make a good anvil, and the frame of the potters wheel is cast iron and the perfect U shape, as a point of intreast the 2 drive cones the right hand one is steel but the left hand is paper!

Sprocket Carrier Casting

Not to bad, but thers some sand inclusions and porosity, and im not happy about the undercuts were i glued on the drive dogs, What i realy need is some kind of fairing compound to smooth out the transitons but will burn out cleanly with the foam.

ELF Upright

Lost Foam Casting Sprocket Carrier

Had a different day than planed, after boring the jack shaft tube i relised (you would think id of messured before starting!?) that it just wasnt wide enough to fit the sprocket bolts through, so i decided to quickly cast a couple of blanks.
But since i was casting i should also make the new sprocket carrier i need (to fit the smaller sprocket and run 10mm closer to the wheel) so i spent the day trying to cave pink foam into very complicated shapes. The stock item seen in the photo below is very light 660g with the 6 8mm studs. and as ive just worked out how to fit a R1 spindel to the wheel saveing 350g, and fiting the smaler alloy sprockt savein 1kg! i dont want to add it all back with a great big lump of alloy.

Brooklyn machine works Jack shaft

Thanks to them for esnding me this pic of a concentric SA jack shaft its like a inside out version of what im building
cheak out ther site for somw pedal powered beautys the Gangster is my kind of Pushy
http://www.brooklynmachineworks.com/site/bikesindex.html

Jack Shaft

Here is my rough arsed "engineering " drawing of the jack shaft along with the bearings and sprockets, since im haveing the jack shaft i decided to make it do 2 jobs and have 2 stage gearing which means i can drop the rear sprocket from 46t to 36t with a saveing in unsprung weight and lowering the chain line, im also useing a 28mm R1 rear spindel saveing a further 400g of unsprung mass.

Here im useing a dial gauge to center the block of alluminum this is esential since i will have to turn it round to machine the other side, with out the dial gauge the bearings wouldnt line up.

And finaly ive bored it out to 35mm to fit the needle rollers im then going to bore both ends out to 42mm for the ballrace and then drill it for the sprocket drives then cut it in half and turn down sholders for the sprockets.

Recumbent Bicycle

RedShift Recumbent Bicycle i made many years ago.

Rough Frame Sketches

Roughing out tube designs, the only production bike that needs a frame like this is the Bimota tesi

My Fathers (alleged) Rudge Ulster

just a picture of my dads old Rudge he always claimed it was an Ulster, but truth was it was a 'bitza' made up from about 5 different bikes (it did have 'ulster' writen on the rear mud gaurd though.

17" wheel is go!

My thanks to Swiss for telling me about Honda Hawk racers fitting 110/70 radials to 2.5" rims to good effect. So i stripped down the comstar tonight in prep for designing and casting a offset spider for the Elf front end.

Tooling

Spent last nite makeing tooling never the most exciting of jobs, but always worth the effort.
In the picture is a extended argon sheild for the TIG torch and an argon backing plate, both of these made so i can weld the titanium exhaust, the torch sheild will also be used fot the pipes, but the backing plate is just for the 2 clamps which is why it has the rather spacific hole patten.
Also in the picture is a guided center punch marking out the rivits in the 17" comstar wheel, so i can acurately drill them out.

Scrappy Weekend

Was realy wanting to make the jack shaft this w/e but only one of the 2 sprockets arived , so instead i did some more work on the wheel casting, and then started to have doubts about the sizes again, so started playing around with bits of wood to visulize the bike, this helped.
And i then went and brought loads more bits and bobs on Ebay hopefully at least some of them will actualy be usefull unlike the gold wing debacle.
So i forgot about wheels and got on with the titanium exhaust hopefully will weld up the clamps tonight.