first ride to work of 2020
- Thread starter 3bs
- Start date
benphyr
Guru-me-not
Weaving with JD. Sounds like a pop song or maybe folk country displaced in the city.
Hope you bike straighter than you paint. The only time I ever got pulled over by the police was ‘cuz I was riding like that.
17 and I was trying to avoid speeding and boredom in a ridiculously slow 50km/h zone outside of town on a Honda Hawk. The officer correctly identified that a 45 minute warning on the side of the one road that passes through town so that approximately 50% of my classmates could not help but notice and talk about it would be more valuable than a quick ticket.
The good old days.
(Finally found a perfect use for this smilie.)
Hope you bike straighter than you paint. The only time I ever got pulled over by the police was ‘cuz I was riding like that.
17 and I was trying to avoid speeding and boredom in a ridiculously slow 50km/h zone outside of town on a Honda Hawk. The officer correctly identified that a 45 minute warning on the side of the one road that passes through town so that approximately 50% of my classmates could not help but notice and talk about it would be more valuable than a quick ticket.
The good old days.
(Finally found a perfect use for this smilie.)
Last edited:
3bs
whereabouts unknown
i think it is best if i leave my encounters with the gendarmes to oral history traditions rather than the permanency of the internet.
no ride to work today as i have a late meeting online. no riding this weekend as my yard did not get a covid 19 memo. yard work is an essential function.
however, i did get a chance to finish my t 50 rear wheel.
digression: what do you call a drink that is made of kraken rum and jack daniel's whiskey? Kraker Jack.
tasting note: as brutal as the breath of the kraken itself chewing on oak timbers of an ill fated ship of the sea. (insert sounds and death screams of pirates here)
and i did do a couple more things on franken trike.
adjusted the rear disc brake to perfection, only to do a panic stop test and generate enough torque to spin the whole mounting bracket. will have to deal with that in the future. front brake has plenty of stopping power, so i took the assembly off like an Italian stripping off a rear view mirror from a Ferrari.
then i added two rear brackets to stiffen the trike. huge improvement. probably should have used a more aero part, but these sorts of decisions are made by whatever i have in the scrap box.
also rotated handle bars. improvement. allows for a straight pull against the pedals for climbing and acceleration. not very aero. speaking of aero, i will need to clean the back end up. maybe a tail box or something. the wheels are outboard far enough they will be fine, but the rear metal is a mess. i could bring the brackets in board more, but the stability of the triangle is really nice. also have to weigh the thing.
maybe this week i will take it for a longer ride and see what kind of speed i can get out of it.
no ride to work today as i have a late meeting online. no riding this weekend as my yard did not get a covid 19 memo. yard work is an essential function.
however, i did get a chance to finish my t 50 rear wheel.
digression: what do you call a drink that is made of kraken rum and jack daniel's whiskey? Kraker Jack.
tasting note: as brutal as the breath of the kraken itself chewing on oak timbers of an ill fated ship of the sea. (insert sounds and death screams of pirates here)
and i did do a couple more things on franken trike.
adjusted the rear disc brake to perfection, only to do a panic stop test and generate enough torque to spin the whole mounting bracket. will have to deal with that in the future. front brake has plenty of stopping power, so i took the assembly off like an Italian stripping off a rear view mirror from a Ferrari.
then i added two rear brackets to stiffen the trike. huge improvement. probably should have used a more aero part, but these sorts of decisions are made by whatever i have in the scrap box.
also rotated handle bars. improvement. allows for a straight pull against the pedals for climbing and acceleration. not very aero. speaking of aero, i will need to clean the back end up. maybe a tail box or something. the wheels are outboard far enough they will be fine, but the rear metal is a mess. i could bring the brackets in board more, but the stability of the triangle is really nice. also have to weigh the thing.
maybe this week i will take it for a longer ride and see what kind of speed i can get out of it.
Attachments
3bs
whereabouts unknown
okay i have no idea why the pictures were doubled. (insert drinking and double vision jokes here)
so, you ask, what is the history of the frankentrike?
so i was looking to build a convertible carbon fiber moving bottom bracket tilting bike/trike lowracer. yes the swiss army pocket knife of recumbent utopia. scoured the internet. saw every cool picture everyone else has seen. read obscure articles, web posts, tracked the pictures cross referenced names, the works. contacted some local carbon fiber companies. contacted some national carbon fiber companies. realized carbon fiber was a good material to use but not the only. look at some aluminum options. watched more utubes watched searched more pictures. drew sketch after sketch, more more more. it became tiresome.
then an exceptionally obscure one off bike that i had studied and had a little file on was offered to me almost by accident, and i was lucky at the time to be able get it.
Commonly known as the zockra clone, although there is no actual connection that know of, it was built in 2013 by ken stolpmann up in charleviox. (although i understand that he was actually a kiwi from NZ) He did not have much success riding it fast, and while i understand he tried to re do it into something more interesting, somewhere along the line he sold it. the next owner did not appear to do much with it and its caretaker had too many irons in the fire. when i received it, it was my plan to figure out how to ride it fast, and then figure out what i needed to do to make it a tilt trike by replacing the rear swing arm assembly. then i got distracted. then, i figure out that the darn bike is near impossible to ride fast, or to be precise, i cant ride it fast. too much flex, to much going on in front, too much caster, i.e. too much rake and trail (among other things) then i got distracted. then i studied the numerous tilt mechanisms, and spend some time brain storming with jim parker and others, and decided that i was not sure there was a solid benefit for the concept to justify the weight and complexity to do it except in high cornering situations, and ironically there were some really neat innovations being made by several people, so i decided to go with a fixed rear, built up an interesting rear end, keeping the convertible concept in play, and then i got distracted. then i started playing with the trike again, and then i was distracted again when again, by pure coincidence and accident another exceptionally obscure one off was offered to me, and i was able to secure some help bringing those specific ideas into 3 dimensions. then while waiting for that project to complete, we get the covid period, and i decide i am going to finish a few projects. which brings us to now.
okay i get distracted a lot.
and yes, marco's bikes are similar, as are so many others but this one is about done, and i am hopeful.
so, you ask, what is the history of the frankentrike?
so i was looking to build a convertible carbon fiber moving bottom bracket tilting bike/trike lowracer. yes the swiss army pocket knife of recumbent utopia. scoured the internet. saw every cool picture everyone else has seen. read obscure articles, web posts, tracked the pictures cross referenced names, the works. contacted some local carbon fiber companies. contacted some national carbon fiber companies. realized carbon fiber was a good material to use but not the only. look at some aluminum options. watched more utubes watched searched more pictures. drew sketch after sketch, more more more. it became tiresome.
then an exceptionally obscure one off bike that i had studied and had a little file on was offered to me almost by accident, and i was lucky at the time to be able get it.
Commonly known as the zockra clone, although there is no actual connection that know of, it was built in 2013 by ken stolpmann up in charleviox. (although i understand that he was actually a kiwi from NZ) He did not have much success riding it fast, and while i understand he tried to re do it into something more interesting, somewhere along the line he sold it. the next owner did not appear to do much with it and its caretaker had too many irons in the fire. when i received it, it was my plan to figure out how to ride it fast, and then figure out what i needed to do to make it a tilt trike by replacing the rear swing arm assembly. then i got distracted. then, i figure out that the darn bike is near impossible to ride fast, or to be precise, i cant ride it fast. too much flex, to much going on in front, too much caster, i.e. too much rake and trail (among other things) then i got distracted. then i studied the numerous tilt mechanisms, and spend some time brain storming with jim parker and others, and decided that i was not sure there was a solid benefit for the concept to justify the weight and complexity to do it except in high cornering situations, and ironically there were some really neat innovations being made by several people, so i decided to go with a fixed rear, built up an interesting rear end, keeping the convertible concept in play, and then i got distracted. then i started playing with the trike again, and then i was distracted again when again, by pure coincidence and accident another exceptionally obscure one off was offered to me, and i was able to secure some help bringing those specific ideas into 3 dimensions. then while waiting for that project to complete, we get the covid period, and i decide i am going to finish a few projects. which brings us to now.
okay i get distracted a lot.
and yes, marco's bikes are similar, as are so many others but this one is about done, and i am hopeful.
