Beja Bicycle Bash

We have more news regarding the Beja Bicycle Bash.

Spike the Barber has agreed to come back again this year.

This means you men can get a great vintage cut and style right at the show.

Rock N Roll Land has also agreed to sponsor our music for the the event.

We are not sure who we are booking yet but it is sure to be great.

Here is an updated flyer.

Jaden and I are moved into the Bicycle Shop.

Here is a picture of a few projects we have rolling.

In the quest to find cool parts we found these awesome brake shoes. I was real excited because of the design. But even better yet they are made in the USA.

More to come soon.

We are moving to a heated shop!

Jaden and I are excited to announce we are moving into a new workshop with heated work space. Work slowed to a snails pace as the weather and the garage temperature got down into the teens. The last three weekends we have been cleaning, moving tools, bicycles, and setting up shop. Our new location is downtown near all the city trails and events we like to bicycle to. After two or three more weekends of work on the shop we should be ready to resume work.

In the meantime we have found the perfect handle bars and a perfect vintage seat for the new bicycle.
Stay tuned for some more updates!

In other news we have picked the date for the Bicycle Bash!
September 28th, 2013. Here is the flyer.

Chain Tensioner

The chain tensioner is going to be something really unique.
The head needs to be detailed and look good. That is want is going to really make the bike.

Looking at various metal types we did not think we could get the detail needed to pull this off. So we will cast this out of resin and paint it. This way all of the color and detail I expect will be there. The tough part will be getting it attached to the metal post of the tensioner. Maybe we can cast a nut right into the resin.

Last night I sculpted the clay positive. From this we will create a mold and cast several resin heads.

One head will go on the chain tensioner. I am debating if we want to use two more adding one to each side of the gas tank. I will let this be Jaden's call.
The Clay a self drying and should be hard after 24 hours. Once dry I will sand it and add in any fine line details before creating the mold. The mold will be silicone so we can get plenty of detail. 

Speedometer and chain tensioner

We found a speedometer that we liked and  ordered it off of e-bay. This is a reproduction of an original Whizzer design but we are okay with that.

The next portion of the project was the chain tensioner.

The supplied tensioner is a bolt device that is manually adjusted.

We looked around and found spring loaded self adjusting tensioners.

The only issue was they are still bolt on products that look "Cheesy"

There is not anything out there that really screamed look at me.

So we decided to build our own.

Sticking with the Halloween theme we designed a scarecrow with a pumpkin head. The tensioner pulley is held in the hand of the scarecrow while the other hand is holding the spring.

I will admit it turned out pretty cool. I want to further modify it so the cape curls up with a hold drilled in the tip. This way we can mount a shorter tension spring without the bolt on clamps.

I really do not like the bolt on look.

We are debating to do the head out of painted steel, anodized aluminum or pained cast resin. The body is tall enough we can bolt on what ever head we like.

I 

Motor Mounting

Here is our second attempt of a motor mount.

The fist was a solid rod we welded parallel to the seat tube clamping the front engine mount to the down tube. The issue was it lowered the engine on the frame and the chain hit the casing. With a little bit of cursing the mount was cut and we fabricated this mount. It fits nicely and the chain moves freely.

We have decided to definitely go with the Halloween theme for this bicycle. Ideally we will get everything fabricated, mounted, and tested before we paint. After we ride it around the block several times we will disassemble everything down to the frame. It will be sand blasted before we paint.
We need to order some more parts.
A speedometer is one item I am looking for. We want a vintage looking speedometer, something different.

After we inspected some of the kit parts they will most likely end up in the garbage. The clutch lever is to short for my taste and the throttle / hand grips are definitely not going to fit our theme. They are flying eagle grips and look pretty cheesy.   

#2 Update

Since we went with a black and orange theme we thought the rims needed to be orange.

The original rims were white, rusty, and Schwinn rims. During our bicycle first restoration we had chrome rims where we were able to get away with cleaning up the chrome and tuning the spokes. The Typhoon rims needed to be blasted painted and reassembled. The new spokes and the hours of time exceeded the value of what new rims can be bought for. The Schwinn rims also limit what is available for tires as they have their own tire sizes that are different from the rest of the industry.

This is where things got frustrating. My wife and I do everything we can to buy local and there was not a good source locally to get any custom parts. Everything would need to be ordered and none of the stuff we were interested in was standard products for the local shops. We ended up ordering rims from Bike Buyers of California. They were delivered to the door for about $80. Not bad at all.

http://www.bikebuyers.com/index.htm

The service was good and the pricing was great. I will order from these guys again.

We also discovered engine kits for bicycles. This is where we had the first major morph in the project. We thought we would do a board track racer type bicycle and add an engine. 

We ordered an engine from another California company called Bike Berry.

http://www.bikeberry.com 

I am happy with the product so far. My only issue was no packing slip was supplied. It was difficult to check the contents and make sure we received all our parts. I had to go back to the website and e-mail them in regards to a couple of parts that were left out of the kit. Their service was fast and pleasant and we had the missing parts in a day or two at no cost to us.