New project idea

It has been quite cold so I haven’t been riding my latest full suspension rig a whole lot, but I am very satisfied with it and I am continuing improvements and refinement.

I have a simple but excellent 12V lighting system, with bright lights front and rear. Yesterday I completed my brake light, rigging a bright red led to a simple 12V battery pack (4 AA batteries) to a simple switch attached to my rear brake lever. I soldered a metal spring and attached it to the throttle body with a small zip tie. I soldered a small metal washer and attached it to the brake handle. Another zip tie leads the washer to the spring when I squeeze. Simple and effective.

My financial situation is expected to be much better next year and my thinking is to buy a small motorcycle. But I have one more motorized bicycle idea:

I have a 140cc 4 stroke, taken from a lawnmower. I intend to convert it for horizontal use, welding on a oil slapped and closing and opening some holes. Should be very reliable. Would have to grind the drive shaft down from 7/8” to 3/4” for a chain driving centrifugal clutch.

I just snagged a motorcycle triple tree stem for a few bucks! I have a couple of nice springs that will fit the big tubes needed for the project so I am foreseeing a kind of plunger tube within a tube. I can make that work by chopping a headtube off a derelict steel bike and welding it to a cafe racer frame of my own design.

Researching pieces, I see that motorcycle fork tubes are very expensive.

I’m thinking that I can rig all this up, add all lights and mirrors and get a motorcycle tag. Has anyone done this?

 

[Timbone]

Amassed some tubing, bearings, and metal parts for a triple tree front end. My idea is a plunger suspension.

 

[Timbone]

Working on the SteamPunk theme, I welded up a headtube and set the angle to the top tube (67 degrees). I’ll fab a drop loop out of tubing that will encircle the engine. Couldn’t help but do a rough mock up of the triple tree.

 

[Timbone]

I have a very rough outline of my steam punk frame. Lots of welding, lacing, grinding to be done as well as gusseting. This is very thick tubing and I didn’t think I could bend it without collapsing so I sliced it several places to get my needed loop. Not the best method but there’s no going back now.

I’ll probably need two nights of welding and grinding to complete. Looking forward to welding in the motor mounts!

After that is complete I’ll weld up a rear swing arm made from a steel front fork. I’m aiming for 7 inch dropout width. Still haven’t made a final decision on my swingarm interface, but I will use a motorcycle mono shock.

 

[Tony Lane]

Nice idea!

 

[Timbone]

I am converting a simple steel front fork to a full suspension swingarm for the rear. My axle size will be 1/2”. I am using two thick 2” fenderwashers to be my axle inserts.

I am thinking that the front fork wasn’t designed to work laterally so I am going to weld a kind of steel skeleton around it so that it is super strong. These pics kinda show where I am going with this. Very rough at this point.

 

[curtisfox]

This is getting interesting got to watch closer, going to be different.............Curt

 

[Timbone]

This is getting interesting got to watch closer, going to be different.............Curt

Here’s my roughly welded swingarm. Still going to add metal strengthening. Failure is not an option!

I think I’ll go with a double shock absorber design. Monoshock would be awesome but I’d like to spread the force around the frame.

 

[Timbone]

Making progress on the 4 stroke bike. You can get a good idea of what my plan is for the swingarm axle. I’m using 2 two inch muffler brackets to hold the rear swingarm. They are more than strong enough and will negate the need for welding. I’ll connect a monoshock that will connect the swingarm to the main tube - you can see I’ve strengthened it considerably with extra metal layers and gussets.

The key to everything is the fitment of my torque converter. I’ll order that soon. Once I have that I can determine how to fabricate my motormounts and my rear hub width for optimal chain line.

 

[Timbone]

I made good progress in my build today, focusing on my front end design.

I welded up my front forks, using unistrut angle for the axle holder. These little things are crazy strong so I will weld my disk brake caliper clamps to those. Just to make sure, I’ll weld two thick washers with 1/2” hole just to make sure the axle is absolutely failproof.

The fork itself will be a kind of shock absorber, with a thick spring supporting a plunger. I think my design will be ok, making it a kind of internal springer with adjustment.

These pics give you an idea of where I am going: