The garage frame building journey
- Thread starter sikocycles
- Start date
Here are a couple pics from the last month. Anybody make anything cool lately?
I made another hammer for a mechanic friend that I’ll see at the Les Gets WC this week.
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Alex from Selwyn Bikes came over to bend some tubes for his first full suspension project.
Wet laps in Morgins on the steel Frameworks with my wife
Started a new frame. My brother has been asking for a longer one.
Making some offset shock hardware
New bike on top of the Mosette lift in Les Crosets. All the lifts are open in the Portes du Soleil and Les Gets WC is this weekend. Yeah!
My favorite one in Champery on the WC track. EU DH Champs are the 11th of August.
I made another hammer for a mechanic friend that I’ll see at the Les Gets WC this week.
Alex from Selwyn Bikes came over to bend some tubes for his first full suspension project.
Wet laps in Morgins on the steel Frameworks with my wife
Started a new frame. My brother has been asking for a longer one.
Making some offset shock hardware
New bike on top of the Mosette lift in Les Crosets. All the lifts are open in the Portes du Soleil and Les Gets WC is this weekend. Yeah!
My favorite one in Champery on the WC track. EU DH Champs are the 11th of August.
These are the frames Alex from Selwyn bikes made (The guy who used my tube bender in the above photo). One has a steel rear end and the other an alu rear end.
Selwyn Bicycles on Instagram: "Double vision Prototype number 2 is ready What is going to work best? Steel/steel or steel/aluminium? Adam @prosisemetalworks has absolutely smashed it on the aluminium rear end. Testing continues #madebyhand #customsteelmtb #steelisrealmtb #aluminiumisalsoreal #madeinsamoens #artisancadreur"
27 likes, 7 comments - selwynbicycles on August 23, 2024: "Double vision Prototype number 2 is ready What is going to work best? Steel/steel or steel/aluminium? Adam @prosisemetalworks has absolutely smashed it on the aluminium rear end. Testing continues #madebyhand #customsteelmtb...
www.instagram.com
And here’s mine that I recently finished. Longer 445/460cm chain stays and steeper seat angle this time.
Burf from BTR came over this summer on his Gasser. Such a cool bike!
And another buddy borrowed my welder to reinforce his rocker pivot. It‘s pretty cool how you can repair or modify steel bikes so easily!
I made this welding arm to better position the frame to be more comfortable when welding. I added another axis of rotation to it after these photos.
More pics of tacking and fabricating the last frame.
More pics of tacking and fabricating the last frame.
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Thanks @rideit!
I should update on how my latest frame has held up.
In the early spring I got busy building a new frame.
It uses a waterjet cut flat plate to locate four critical points on the frame. The bb, main pivot, rocker mount, and forward shock mount are all located in this single piece. This makes jigging up the frame very simple.
It's designed so that the bottom of the plate locates flat against my figure and the downtube also gets a flat cut on it to have it also sit on the fixture. I 3d printed some cut guides to get the end of the dt the correct angle (no pics of these).
The seattube was also designed to land on top of the main pivot housing. The main pivot is the 44mm headtube and two upper cups design that I have used on three fs frames now.
Next time after I weld on the forward shock mount I am going to remove the thin strip that connects it to the lower section as it was a pain to braze and isn't needed. Dropping the dt forward of the bb gave me clearance to put the main pivot and rocker pivot where I wanted them in my suspension layout.
Then it was onto the rear end. I had been designing this as a single flex rear end but then the more I worked on it I decided it could dual flex. The seatstays flex for both the faux bar dropout pivot and the front rocker. The LR on this is linear progressive, nice and flat without much curve to it. It's a low ish mid teens progression.
video of the rear end cycling. (is there a way to direct embed this? )
In this one you can see how it moves under light finger pressure.
The frame is designed for the 170mm Ohlins 36 and has 160mm rear travel.
It's first ride was the Pemberton Enduro, as it seems has become a trend for me, I finish a bike as the last minute for an event and it gets thrown straight into the fire for it's test ride.
External routing with some 3d printed PETG cable guides I designed. The mounting holes for the guides are flow drilled and then roll tapped. The bottle cage was also done with the flow drill. Neat process where it melts the hole in then you have extra material to tap the threads. No need to weld in a bottle boss.
A couple of months later and the bike raced again. This time the WORCA Back-Forty marathon XC. Swapped in some pinner XC tires but didn't change anything else.
After the Back-Forty I was washing it and inspecting it and found that I didn't get great wet out on a small part of the head tube brazing. Knowing that the frame would have it's major test in a few weeks the paint was stripped back and I cleaned up the head tube brazing in that one small spot. Also the cross tube in the rear end I should have used a thicker gauge as it didn't look happy, I was able to find a tube with the right OD to press in from the non drive side and braze in for reinforcement.
Fresh splatter.
The real test...will it survive Psychosis....
Few laps of Dead Dog and sending the road gap.
Only change made for Psychosis DH was some Conti DH tires and a larger chainring. The frame did great
Happy with the way it turned out. Plans are spinning away on the next one with some more updates and refinement.
In the early spring I got busy building a new frame.
It uses a waterjet cut flat plate to locate four critical points on the frame. The bb, main pivot, rocker mount, and forward shock mount are all located in this single piece. This makes jigging up the frame very simple.
It's designed so that the bottom of the plate locates flat against my figure and the downtube also gets a flat cut on it to have it also sit on the fixture. I 3d printed some cut guides to get the end of the dt the correct angle (no pics of these).
The seattube was also designed to land on top of the main pivot housing. The main pivot is the 44mm headtube and two upper cups design that I have used on three fs frames now.
Next time after I weld on the forward shock mount I am going to remove the thin strip that connects it to the lower section as it was a pain to braze and isn't needed. Dropping the dt forward of the bb gave me clearance to put the main pivot and rocker pivot where I wanted them in my suspension layout.
Then it was onto the rear end. I had been designing this as a single flex rear end but then the more I worked on it I decided it could dual flex. The seatstays flex for both the faux bar dropout pivot and the front rocker. The LR on this is linear progressive, nice and flat without much curve to it. It's a low ish mid teens progression.
video of the rear end cycling. (is there a way to direct embed this? )
In this one you can see how it moves under light finger pressure.
The frame is designed for the 170mm Ohlins 36 and has 160mm rear travel.
It's first ride was the Pemberton Enduro, as it seems has become a trend for me, I finish a bike as the last minute for an event and it gets thrown straight into the fire for it's test ride.
External routing with some 3d printed PETG cable guides I designed. The mounting holes for the guides are flow drilled and then roll tapped. The bottle cage was also done with the flow drill. Neat process where it melts the hole in then you have extra material to tap the threads. No need to weld in a bottle boss.
A couple of months later and the bike raced again. This time the WORCA Back-Forty marathon XC. Swapped in some pinner XC tires but didn't change anything else.
After the Back-Forty I was washing it and inspecting it and found that I didn't get great wet out on a small part of the head tube brazing. Knowing that the frame would have it's major test in a few weeks the paint was stripped back and I cleaned up the head tube brazing in that one small spot. Also the cross tube in the rear end I should have used a thicker gauge as it didn't look happy, I was able to find a tube with the right OD to press in from the non drive side and braze in for reinforcement.
Fresh splatter.
The real test...will it survive Psychosis....
Few laps of Dead Dog and sending the road gap.
Only change made for Psychosis DH was some Conti DH tires and a larger chainring. The frame did great
Happy with the way it turned out. Plans are spinning away on the next one with some more updates and refinement.