Warren builds a chopper

[Chalo]

Your design reminds me very much of the Dyno Roadster (gone but not forgotten) and its many clones.



Seems to me that you could use a frame like that, if you made a subframe to carry the seat a little farther back. (Same idea as a banana seat with sissy bar, but smaller and stronger.) I don't think you'd have to place your seat any more rearward than a traditional pillion position.

Building your own from scratch has its own virtues, and I have built many a bike frame and component myself-- but I hesitate to make anything from raw materials if I can buy something else cheaply and adapt it to do what I want. Seems like the going rate online for a Dyno Roadster clone frame is $180, or about $300 for a basic complete bike. That's cheap.

For many years, I rode a chopper based on a shorter Dyno Glide Deluxe frame like this one,

retrofitted with a 25" long fork, 18" ape hangers, and 20" wheels. I'm 6'8" tall and 350 pounds with a relatively long-legged build, and the only parts I had to make were a very long, strong seatpost from 8ga chromoly tubing, and a special steer tube to convert the triple-tree style fork to a stacked crown conventional fork.

I recently converted that frame back over to 26" wheels and a normal length fork to make a power-assist bike for my wife, but I can still ride it with no fit problems. I used a BMX handlebar to allow a spacious cockpit that works adequately for both my 5'8" wife and myself (though the bars must be tilted differently for best fit).

Chalo

[RallySTX]

Lay down some beads for us Warren. Looks promising to me.
Brian L.

[www.recumbents.com]

I finished the full sized drawing and started rolling tubing. The drawing isn't high enough contrast on the brown paper to show up on the camera, so you can't see that the final drawing is just a bit different than the last drawing above.



The tubes have turned out perfect so far, except for the bottom tube with the compound curve does have a couple artifacts where the bend transitions. It only takes about 20 minutes to bend each tube.

-Warren.

[AussieJester]

Great stuff Warren... any chance of a link to the bender you bought?
i have been trying to get a roller bender cheap for 3 years anything in Australia
is 800 dollars plus too much for the amount i will use it...

Best of luck with the fab mate, will be a goer when shes done!!

KiM

[Thud]

Looking good Warren!

AJ, do you have harbor freight in ozz?
http://www.harborfreight.com/tubing-roller-99736.html
china specials that will get you going......now that i think about it, you have a friend doing some lost foam castings....whip up some bending dies in the correct radius for the tubes & your hydrolic tube krinkler (pipe bender) may suprize you. Just give em to danny & he can cast em next time he has the furnace fired up.(i have one myself i been going to make some proper dies for)

looking foward to seeing FULL AERO (clear of course so we can see your handi work ) on that uh...bobber W.

[AussieJester]

Looking good Warren!

AJ, do you have harbor freight in ozz?
http://www.harborfreight.com/tubing-roller-99736.html
china specials that will get you going......now that i think about it, you have a friend doing some lost foam castings....whip up some bending dies in the correct radius for the tubes & your hydrolic tube krinkler (pipe bender) may suprize you. Just give em to danny & he can cast em next time he has the furnace fired up.(i have one myself i been going to make some proper dies for)

looking foward to seeing FULL AERO (clear of course so we can see your handi work ) on that uh...bobber W.

Nagh i wish ThuD, any machinery here cost shitload more than you get it in USA..The pipe bender is useless but all i
could get in my budget...I think its easier to just buy one Thud, than wasting hours making dies
if i could get that HF bender landed for ~300 bucks i would be happy as pig in shit! I wont be
making anymore frames with bends in them until i get another bender anyways, the thin
wall tubing just doesn't bend without crinkling int he pipe bender, i have the correct shape
dies for the tubing i been bending, they just ain't made for this kind of work i'm afraid...

Thanks for the link anyhoot Todd appreciated... When i have spme spare $$$ i'll see if they delivery to OZ
and see what the cost is, i dont need the stand just the top unit, maybe that will reduce the price?

KiM

EDiT:- doesn't look like they ship out of USA Thud...when the time comes any chance i could throw money at you to send me one?

[RallySTX]

The link above is for just the top unit. I would send it to you Kim, if you cover my costs.
Brian L.

[www.recumbents.com]

Finished bending tubes. Now comes the hard part, putting it together. Here are the tubes all mocked up. That shiny thing below the frame is a 36" steel ruler. Yes, there are parts that need to be cut off...



Thinking about some rear suspension. I like this design, very compact.



Next step is to obtain the head tube and bottom bracket, and to gather the frame fixtures.

-Warren.

[RallySTX]

Lookin a mite hefty, but the curves are interesting. That lateral shock looks neat.
Brian L.

[www.recumbents.com]

Here is is with the tube ends 'shopped out.



These are big tubes, but very thin. Nonetheless as Brian notes, the bike will not be a lightweight.

With big monster Fat Frank tires, will it be worthwhile to add the rear suspension? I don't think this will ever see more then "cruiser" duty.

-Warren.

[www.recumbents.com]

One of the things my original chopper design had that the latest design does not have is gussets. I really don't need them with these large diameter tubes.

OTOH, they do look cool.

Here's a company that makes them for cheap, but they are massively thick.

http://www.tmrcustoms.com/store/index.p ... cts_id=408

These are more expensive but not as massive:

https://www.nolimitparts.com/prodinfo.asp?number=SW-6

-Warren.

[RallySTX]

If it can be done without adding too much work to an already challenging endeavor, I would go for the rear suspension. Since you can pedal, you can assist the motor, if needed. The main reason is comfort. You will ride it more, if it's comfy! Do you need to carry it down or up a flight of stairs? I do! The shock can help handling if set up right. Too much travel will mess up high speed cornering. With the length of the tubes you have, I hope you are considering gusseting the joints, and that the thickness is generous. It might flex it's way into a problem. My Spoiler flexes and that's with just me on it. I'm not entirely sure if it's all the frame, or the wheels, which I know are soft. Keep Rockin! Warren.
Brian L.

[www.recumbents.com]

I received the head tube and bottom bracket and spent some time putting the main frame together. I started with attaching the head down tube to the head tube and worked from there.

Here's the tubing notcher I used to fish mouth the tubes.



I used my homemade frame jig to align each tube while I tack brazed it and it turned out pretty well. The fork is just hanging on the frame in this picture.



Wow, that one section of straight tube is really conspicuous. Don't worry, I will be attaching a seat and suspension spring and stuff to it so it will be somewhat disguised. Next step is to build the rear stays and the suspension pivot.

-Warren.

[RallySTX]

Looks good so far, but my eye thinks it could use more ground clearance. The forks look a tad short, but then I'm a chopper fiend anyway.
Brian L.

[www.recumbents.com]

Yeah, it's a bit low now Brian, but will have more ground clearance when I put the wheels on. 3" is plenty for road riding.

-Warren.

[RallySTX]

You ought to see our driveway. A standard OCC bike bottoms out the kickstand on the speed bumps, and the ramp is even worse. Lookin forward to some more build pics. Cheers.
Brian L.

[www.recumbents.com]

Yeah hitting that pointy frame on a chunk of concrete would not be fun. The fork can be adjusted up & down a bit, I'll be sure to adjust it properly.

I haven't decided whether I should just use the relatively stealth BMC "600 watt" hub motor from my commuter MTB, or go completely crazy with a big new non-hub motor mounted in the frame. If I re-use the BMC motor I could just steal the wheels and components from that bike and make this build a lot cheaper. This bike will already scream "motorcycle" though, so maybe stealth is a good idea.

-Warren.

[RallySTX]

That Bmc is geared right? A Crystalite or 9C hub might be a better choice power wise. That BMC will be working hard to move that bike. At least you don't have the hills we have in Janesville. An external drive makes more noise, and increases maintenance time. I would hit up Methods, or one of the other guys selling new hubs and get a Xlite HS/HT and a Lyen controller, and throw 88v of Lipo at it. What's more important to you, take off power, or outright speed? As long as the pedals work, the bike is registered, and you're not making a menace of yourself, you should be ok. Chicago cops can be tough though, can't they. I understand the desire for stealth, in a big city, it's just not my style. I'm thinking a good set of front and rear lights and a conservative riding style, would go a long way toward reducing conflict with the Police. By all means try the BMC kit first, to shake down the bike and reduce initial startup cost, but eventually I would go for the Xlite setup, it's just too much fun to ignore. If I didn't have no less than 5 different 20% grades to contend with, there would already be a HS hub on order. But with 180mm dropouts, 20 inch wheel size, my weight, and the hills, I'm a tourqe fiend for now.
Brian L.

[www.recumbents.com]

The bike really won't be that heavy. Probably under 40 lbs without any e-bits, 70lbs total with the 10lb BMC motor and 20lb Ping battery. That's the advantage of working with thin wall chrome-moly tubing.

I mounted the front suspension fork last night. This is a nice fork that I picked up in a fleabay auction, but it was made before MTB disk brakes were standardized. It does have disk brake mounting tabs but I'll need to make an adapter to be able to mount a standard disk brake. In addition, the disk brake on my current disk brake front wheel barely clears the fork tube, and the brake rotor mounting bolts have hard interference. The only option I can think of it to machine several millimeters off of the disk rotor mount on the hub. Does anyone have any other ideas or know of a hub that would work better?

Thanks,

-Warren.

[RallySTX]

I read your thread back too front, and I don't see any data on the wheel in question. Other than the mention of another MTB with the EpartsUnless you can borrow the forks from the other bike too, I don't see any way arround some very hard work. At this point I would go shopping for a newer set of forks with the standardised disk brake mounts. Mabye after the holiday other users with more between their ears than turkey will reply with better advice. For now, Happy Thanksgiving!
Brian L.

[AussieJester]

You can buy adapters from ChoppersUS that allows disk brakes to be mounted on non disk brake
forks...

http://www.choppersus.com/store/product ... et-Billet/

Good ol ThudSTeR picked me up a bender from HF, he got it for 130 bucks all up thanks
to a 20% discount voucher...I'm heading out mid morning to the otherside of town
to pickup some chromo tubing from Go Gear Racing Services , not super cheap
but not to bad shouldn't cost more than 150 bucks for the tubing for 1 and half frames
leaves me some leway to f*ck a few bends up, which usually happens at least once per frame i have done

I noted you stated each bend took about 20 minutes? seems along time i thought the bender would be a little
faster, the old pipe bender i usd took about 10 minutes a bend, not an issue whatsoever i got all the time in the
world long as it comes out right, it just surprised me a little and was wondering if this
might be more of a "first time" user taking your time to get it right type
thing? It also surprised me the quality you got from this bender, if it is the first time
you have done such work its bloody good effort no, an exceptional effort as the bends
have come out exactly as you planned them I'm guessing your not new to DiY
and a workshop/tools/machinery though, or you likely wouldnt have taken on building a custom frame?
You haZ skillz SiR

Can't wait to start on my next frame using the new HF bender and some chromo...I will
be checking out the 1.5 x .035 no idea what that is in metric though hopefully
the mob at theing Go Gear Racing Services
will know...

keep up the great work mate, shes coming along nicely, hope you sort the brake/fork issue out ..

KiM

[www.recumbents.com]

Hi Kim,

Thanks, this is not my first build, but it was the first time I used a tubing roller. I'm happy that Thud got you a good deal. The roller bender is so cool (and takes longer) because you roll the tube back and forth in the bender, crank down the bolt a turn, roll the tube back and forth, crank down the bolt a turn... Well, you get the drift. The bend happens gradually. When it starts looking close, you take it out of the roller and see it it's right. If not, you take it back out and do some more rolling. Don't crank it down too much at once because that's going to kink the tube or cause the rollers to dig in. There's really no excuse for borking a tube if you take your time. I'll take a video when I bend the chain stays if you think it's worthwhile.

I got a good suggestion from lowracer builder Rick at the recumbents.com forum. He said to use a sturmey-archer XFD hub brake. A little research shows that this brake has about the same stopping power as a disk brake, so that works for me. Re-lacing the wheel with a new hub will be less work than getting the disk brake to work.


Here's the fork mounted in the frame.



The bars look cool but they would be tough to reach.

-Warren.

[RallySTX]

I love that massive top tube. And that triple tree with the rearward sweeping extensions is awesome! The brake hub idea is a stroke of inspiration, Lookin GOOD Warren, keep it up!
Brian L.

[AussieJester]

That top tube is CHUNK-eeeee...LOVE it and thankyou for the pic! I was starting to think the 1.5in diameter was a lil much
as i just bought 4meters of it and been looking at it compared to the 32mm diameter on the current mild steel frame
..... for rear chain and seat stays went for 19mm diameter (sorry no idea in imperial) and thicker wall thickness to
cope with the flex the motor torque puts on the frame under hard acceleration...
I can't believe how much lighter the tubing is compared to mild steel having not
worked with chromo before and thus, i wasn't aware there was such a weight difference, ill knock KILOs
off the weight of the frame compared to the original mild steel job! also picked up some 4130 plate for gussets etc
so rigid .... love the stuff but is pricey... !

Can't wait to see this thing completed after that shot! its coming along very nicely Warren!!

KiM

[www.recumbents.com]

All the tubes are the same diameter but that shot does make the top tube look HUGE.

Spent some time gathering the bits together for the rear suspension pivot and cut the hole in the frame for the pivot shell. I took pics but now it's time to go eat some turkey and socialize with relatives.

-Warren.