A few weeks back I posted on here looking for advice on a balance bike frame that would suit my nephew (a 5’8″ young fella with some special needs). I got some good ideas from that but then out of the blue a certain Mick Rushton (mick_r on here, superhero in real life 🙂 ) emailed me some photos of a singlespeed frame he’d custom made for himself and offered to custom make a frame for said nephew!
How great is that! So mega thanks to Mick for volunteering and all the work so far.
Anyway after lots of measuring, remeasuring, emails, humming and hawing we settled on the following (Mick does all the work btw 🙂 )
Basically a really low saddle works best for him (keeps his legs away from the frame / wheel) along with higher bars. BTW there is no BB – that’s just in the diagram for reference.
Yesterday Mick got the tools out and took some photos as he went:
It’s going to be brazed together, then powder coated in the chosen colour.
Initially I’ll build it with a single rear brake (I need to modify a v-brake lever to run really close to the bars), low saddle, bars about 15cm higher. As he gets the hang of it we hope to raise the saddle so he can get a bit more push and the bars will rise with stems and risers (up to bmx stye one is required).
Also thanks to Alisdair for the new forks and Brad for other bits: much appreciated.
Hello all. Sorry for the delay – must get a password I can remember at home….
No progress yesterday as we had a kid free day out (singlespeed blast around back of Skiddaw). I’ll hopefully be snatching bits of metal time after work this week.
Plans now changed slightly as I need to get chainstays (cut down forks) attached before brazing head tube (so I can tweak the head tube height once back end is fixed – mitre directions mean there is no margin for adjustment in the back end). Ronan – I’ll drop you a mail to discuss a mod in the chainstay length.
Wilbur – I might be persuaded to make things for friends (and I’ve just bought £300 of tubes….). This bike is passing on the random mtb kindness of strangers thing after your / Pam’s help last new year 🙂
Probably silver soldering seat clamp after work tonight. More pics as things happen.
Just grabbed an hour in garage – front trimmed off main tube, front tube blanking plate shaped and seat tube under-stub trimmed down.
Top tube is half mitred – just got seat tube end to cut. Going with a small diameter 22mm tube – hopefully strong enough….
Nasty seatstays (I hate making them!) will be 19mm. Then maybe a rear disc mount if time available……..
Food and painting a wall in the house next. Then maybe a final hour to finish that tube ready for brazing (no gas bottles at home). Eternal balance of family-home-work-biking-bikebuilding-etc
Time for another mini – update. No pics this time, but I managed a bit of a fundamental booboo on the forks (: –
I never checked if they were road or mtb disk forks. I just assumed disk = mtb. Doh. Turns out they’re too narrow for the tyres we were planning.
But – more good will – Dave at Schwalbe is providing tyres, tubes and rim tape. Fantastic! Of course I’ve always loved Schwalbe tyres : cause they’re the best! And we may have some new brakes on the way too: touch wood.
Thanks non-cutlery-guy (why oh why did we come up with these usernames). I think we’re going the use the forks we have (as they’re new) and skinny tyres. But it’s up to Mick really. Hopefully he can post up later.
Managed a bit of brazing last night (didn’t do a great job but don’t think Andrew will notice) then an hour tonight cleaning things up a bit. I’m not loving the looks of the front end but that configuration was a deliberate choice to do a quick job / avoid alignment issues etc.
Side view in approx bike alignment shows top brace tube now stuck in place – 30 degree down slope on main tube and 10 degree on brace tube.
One of Ronan’s spare rigid forks should be fine. Its been designed around a 400mm A-C fork so not really suspension friendly – but thanks for the offers.
Davetaylforth was asking about my own bike – so I’ve indulged in a picture below (first proper showing on singletrack!) 29er with sub 16″ chainstays……..
And finally a big thanks to our sponsors! Now looks like we have some nice new finishing bits where we would otherwise have been using nasty scrapbin salvage.
Thanks so far to:-
Ronan’s pals
The Bike Chain
Chipps at Singletrack
Dave at Schwalbe UK
Also to Craig at Ride On and Amos at Keswick MTBS – they both offered forks etc when I was hunting for donor steel things to chop up.
Tomorrow should be cutting and bending of seatstays!