To answer the questions 1. The tire is actually longer then required. We made a heavy duty 2ft long clamp similar to a carpenters clamp and small 1" wide piece of 3" "C". The "C" channel holds one the internal wire that is tire and the other end is attached to the clamp. By in screwing the clamp open the wire is tensioned and the rubber tire (essentially like a piece of rubber hose) begins to shrink and tighten onto the wheel. Once the rubber is tight and cannot be rolled off the rim the wire is welded together at the intersection point in the "c" channel and snipped off the excess. Then pulling the "C" Channel out between the two ends of the rubber, the tire expands back and fills the gap and seamless joint is made. 2. We made the hub from a 36 hole unicycle hub and I was able to drill holes between the factory holes. Hubs can be bought from a site call hiwheel.com. 3. We did a three cross on the spokes.
9 лет назад
Congratulations, nice bike. Very good work, and easy to do. I saw that has 72 spokes. So, how Many crosses did you use, for lacing spokes? Or it is radial spoking? Regards
MrLeonard55 I was lucky enough to be able to use my large flange unicycle hub and machined the 18 extra holes between the existing holes on each side. You can try www.hiwheel.com for parts.
excellent work! Is there no problem for the rubber to sit properly in the rim due the the spoke nipples that are sticking out? I made my rim from two normal bicycle wheels (TIG welded together) but I am considering another rim by your method because of more rigidity. May I ask what material you used for the spokes, and for the steel cable in the rubber.
Bas Bekema We ended up grinding any spokes coming thru the end of the nipples. We used DT Swiss stainless steel 2mm spokes and the longest nipples available (think 16mm) from our local bike shop. And they were nice enough to lend us their spoke threading machine. I cut the hook end off and threaded the end and joined to the nipples with locktite and used two vise grips to snug them up tight. For the tire wire, I used a two pieces of drop ceiling wire. Not sure if was 10g or 12g. Had to weld two lengths together and then later trimmed off once the tire was place and tight. The tubing we used was actually a heavy wall chrome pipe, there were used in women’s clothing store as part of racking, that had gone out of business, that I was hired to clear all the contents by the owner.
Evan Casey It was Mig welded. I prepared the edge to weld by giving a slight chamfer and leaving a slight gap between the two edges to allow weld material to fill in. I tack welded it first, then did a series of slow spot welds overlapping and welded the entire rim together
Gerardo Ignacio Garcia Rivera We used a step stool at first. The video was shot as soon as we brought it out of the garage. We later added a step at the back above the rear wheel. We made it so that you can either use your left or right foot to mount. The step is 8" long and welded in the middle on the frame. We put two slim profile bicycle hand grips on it for traction.
Tree Topley We used three old wheel chair wheel rubbers. Then used suspended ceiling drop wire and welded two ten foot lengths together. We built a special 2 ft long screw clamp ( a super strong "C" clamp) and used a 1.5" wide piece of 3" C channel that had one small v groove cut into one each side and right size slot cut into the other side. I machined a hole with a set screw on the side to firmly hold and fix the wire. The C channel block was put between the two ends of the rubber tire and the internal wire cris crossed inside the C channel. The other end of the wire was attached to the large screw clamp and then the process of screwing the clamp out and drawing the wire tight and compressing the rubber tire until all the slack( we had about 1 ft extra rubber) was drawn tight to the rim. Welded the wire at the crisscross and cut off the extra and filed and ground smooth. I forgot to mention put some dish soap inside the tire for some lubrication for the wire to slide when compressing. Remove the C channel space block and magically watched the rubber expand back and make a seamless joint. Ps there are some videos on RU-vid now that show this.
That was just a test saddle! I bought a more original looking saddle at a later date from the local bike shop. We had just made it and borrowed a saddle from my bike to test ride it.
