OT - bikes

[swarfrat]

So the kiddo has been tearing up the house on his balance bike. Flying down the gravel driveway, terrorizing the cat and dog (both old and arthritic and hard of hearing) while zooming around the house.  He's only 2.5 but he wants pedals soooooo bad.  He's about as ready as he can be without actually having  pedals. (Actually, after seeing one, he wants a unicycle, but that's not happening Maybe when he's 6 or 8 we'll both get one and learn together)). Only thing is - he's so little - the 12" bikes suck, and I'm not paying $200-300 for a bike shop bike for a 2 yo. Once he's big enough for 16" bikes, the Wallyworld bikes get less stupid.

So I picked up a used Huffy 12" bike, short wheelbase and all, for like $15. The seat height on the huffy isn't bad, it's just the stupid short wheelbase (coming from a baritone guitar fan here). 

It needs to grow by about 4"  in length for handling and lower center of gravity. Thinking something along the lines of:

I may actually not skeletonize the plywood - or might skin it with luan - and use the big solid surface for visiblity (dayglo/retroreflective paint/ etc..) Won't be Tonar or Great Ape grade but hey...loud works too.

 

[pabloman]

Awesome! I've been building bikes with/for my boys for a few years now. It's pretty fun. I can tell you though, three piece cranks, sealed bearings and integrated headsets really take a chunk out of the guitar/wood/hardware budget. We've modernized a couple old school frames from my day. Those were fun. They boys love to shoot too. Now there's a couple extra .22's in the house. Damn kids.

 

[mayfly]

wow!  those are some cool bikes!  are there plans out there?  Kits?  what's the deal?

 

[swarfrat]

Forget the college fund, i should've started a 22LR fund when he was born. Yikes that stuff is crazy nowdays. I think the last I paid was $7.88 for a box of 550.  My nieces and nephews are mostly in their late teens now, I took care of the youth gun so long ago that the form might be destroyed soon.

Someone else at work told me he had a free kids bike - i think it's a girls bike, so it's probably a good candidate for the chop & paint. His kids are teenagers now -so I'm actually hoping this is a frame from a 14-16" bike, rather than a 12".  (Incidently, I noticed that girls bikes outnumber boys bikes about 3x1 on Craigslist. Not sure why. Boys destroy theirs? Girls lose interest sooner? Boys want to hang onto theirs?  Not the pink one daddy - the purple glitter one?? I dunno.)

There are kits and plans for wooden bikes out there. Given the nature of what I want to do here, I'm going to have to wing it. But yeah, I love the motorcycle looking one.

 

[sixstringsamurai]

Awesome! I've been building bikes with/for my boys for a few years now. It's pretty fun. I can tell you though, three piece cranks, sealed bearings and integrated headsets really take a chunk out of the guitar/wood/hardware budget. We've modernized a couple old school frames from my day. Those were fun. They boys love to shoot too. Now there's a couple extra .22's in the house. Damn kids.

Origin 8 makes some reasonable crank parts, when I did the recovery on my 83 Peugeot, I had to retain all the open bearing works except for the wheels which I re-laced with BMX seal hubs with the same flange Dia.
Because old french bikes have funny sizes, Velo orange carries sealed crank bearings but not headsets, so I just bust it down every couple years and repack it with marine grade grease.

 

[pabloman]

I converted an old school Redline with a 1" threaded headset to a 1 1/8 ". So now we can run the modern forks and stem. For the bottom bracket I had to get a spacer that pressed into the frame then the smaller sealed bearing presses into that. Works pretty good.

 

[mayfly]

Man this is like when we were putting 302 V8's in Pintos back in high school!!

It's old school hot roding!

 

[swarfrat]

If this interests you, there's a ton of different types of wooden bike [frames] out there - from bent wood, to functional replacements of traditional  bike frames to recumbents to funky carved artwork things.  Just google for images on wooden bike frames.

We're more going for function here - getting a little tyke onto a bike without waiting on the magical combination of ergonomics, growing boys, and mass market pricing.  But that one carved bike reminds me of an one of the carved stock Anschutz sorta rifles. I must admit the hoe handle bike shot has a perverse utilitarian appeal.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Great Ape can do some killer woodburning on that!!!

 

[swarfrat]

That would be awesome if it weren't for the fact that I'm doing it for a little boy who's growing like a weed, and I'm DIY'ing to avoid a couple hundred bucks... which wouldn't touch the bazillions of hours of artisan labor he does. I'm afraid this one is going to be 1/2" ply slab sides, with glued & screwed hardwood clamp blocks firmly gripping  the pieces of tube we cut out of the donor bike.

This is more the place for hi-viz reflective yellow paint and spiderman stickers. (Actually, thats a minor gripe is kids stuff is so busy with decals and branding that I feel like it actually works like camouflage). Something like so:

 

[sixstringsamurai]

here's the whip,
core lite bars shortened 3.5 inches Oury Grips San Marco saddle. Origin 8 crank set, ORIGINAL Rigida Rims relaced with BMX hubs, ACS FAT freewheel, and a KMC moped chain...NO STRETCH. Original brakes, new pulls.
27 x 1 1/4 Conti Gator skins.
Sandblasted by me, Kermit green powder coat by Geekhouse.

 

[swarfrat]

Picked up a freebie girls bike from a coworker today - looks like it's a 16". Assuming forks/crank are swappable, and it doesn't result in too little steering angle (getting rid of twitchiness was the whole reason for wanting the longer wheelbase / lower CG),  I may not need to make my frame after all.  Definitely going to need some paint work though - my boy can't be riding the little mermaid around.  (Although I've always thoughts that girls and boys bikes were backwards regarding the frame. Step through has some advantages for boys - particularly if they're brave / adventurous.)

 

[sixstringsamurai]

Step through frames were original courier (most at the time being men) bikes due to the ease and speed of dismount.
So yeah there is some validity to your though process.

 

[swarfrat]

... and also protection in the even of unplanned dismount. A 2.5 yo getting his first pedals and no training wheels, I'm sure there will be plenty.

 

[sixstringsamurai]

Oh yes, I remember my first intimate moment with a bicycle cross bar...

 

[swarfrat]

At first glance, it looks like ALL the hardware will bolt between bikes. Yay! The Huffy's steering angle is VERY upright (and has Zero rake) - and it's already a really short wheelbase. The Little Mermaid bike is really only about 4" longer, it looks much longer and taller in this pic  Two concerns I have about a direct swap - lowering the front is going to reduce the steering angle, and the Huffy bars are welded. Surely that has to be a two piece deal - maybe I can put the LM bars on the Rockit forks.  The LM seat minimum seat height looks similar to the Rockit.  I haven't taken any measurements yet. I could preserve some steering angle by keeping the LM forks and using the 12" tire.  On further pondering - virtually all of the seat height change will come from the back wheel. I might just run 12" in the rear and (looks like 16") up front.

And oh yeah, it's definitely in need of gender reassignment surgery.

 

[DangerousR6]

Some of those aren't just bikes, they are works of art...

 

[swarfrat]

I assume you're talking about the carved gunstock looking bike and not the Little Mermaid.

 

[DangerousR6]

I assume you're talking about the carved gunstock looking bike and not the Little Mermaid.

The Huffy... :headbang1: