Bike Building and Modifying, April/May/June 2020


April 7: The beginning stages of a custom ride for a local client. It's a "reverse trike," meaning there are 2 wheels in front and one in back. Tandem (2 people). Randy started with a plan he bought from one of his favorite sites for inspiration, but altered some things.


April 17: Working out the seat spacing and placement...


April 18: Also during this time, Randy had another local client ask if he could figure out how to modify her recumbent trike so that she could also pedal with her arms to help out her bad knees. He's no artist, but it works to figure out how something might go together...


April 24: You can now see pedal assemblies and gear sets...



April 27: With chain and handle bars, it's getting close to its maiden test-ride. No brakes or gear shifters yet, but we don't have much for hills here.


May 2: Randy and the tractor and I moved this beastly oven from the pole barn garage into the "powder coat room," which we had planned to be its permanent home. (We moved it into a different spot a couple days ago. The room below will now be strictly for applying powder, because with the oven in that corner, there's not much room to work IN the room. So it's now in the corner of the shop's large bay.)

May 6: The first test ride! (YouTube video)

May 13: Andrew is helping Dad put custom-ordered heavy duty wheel spokes into a heavy-duty wheel hub. The outdoors was really cold and crummy, so it was nice to have Randy bring some clean, sit-down work inside the house to be near us.



June 15: Here's the finished modification job! It was quite fun to test ride. Using your arms really made an uphill climb feel like flat ground!


June 18: It's powder-coat day! The large oven takes about an hour to preheat (and a fair amount of electricity to do so), so Randy got all the powder coating for the tandem trike done in one afternoon. Just a couple "loads." Here he's applying "mirror black" powder to seat frames, handle bars, steering rods, and lots of little parts. He basically sends an electric current through one piece at a time, which is hanging by its own wire from the oven rack, and the powder is sprayed with air power and sort of "clings" to the piece with static electricity. Then we don't touch it until it's been baked!


June 18: Here's the mirror black load just about powdered. Then Randy and I carefully carry the rack to the oven and slide it in...
and this is after it's been baked! It's baked at about 400 degrees for 20 minutes after reaching "flow out," which mean the powder is starting to look more wet/glossy instead of dry and chalky.

Here, Randy's applying Mirror Blue as a base color and then some Metallic blue over the top.

And of course you can't see the metallic quality in a still photo, but it turned out great and the client loved the color!


June 20: Final assembly is the really FUN part.


June 24: Coming along nicely...


June 30: And it's done! It's a sweet and efficient ride with bells and whistles. Including but not limited to: a pouch behind each seat for housing a water bag for drinking while riding, saddlebags in the back, adjustable seats, disc brakes, AND each person can choose their gear difficulty and/or take a break from pedaling whenever they want to. The original plan would require the passenger to always be pedaling when the driver was pedaling, and vice versa. Randy's brilliant.


Side view.

Comments

  1. CarrieJuly 26, 2020 at 4:09 AM

    I love these updates!!!! You guys have such a different life form everyone else. Can't wait to someday come visit!!!! 😁😎 love, Carrie.

    ReplyDelete

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