98cc

Thanks for all the awesome comments guys! The place that we are staying at tonight in Rakaia has internet access so i can catch up on a few things. The ride is going extremely well so far and i am very pleased with how the bike is going, no problems yet and i think we have done a bit over 100km now. We went out to Erewhon station yesterday and had a good tour around which was cool. Tomorrow is the big day with a bit over 80km to do so i am looking foward to that. I have managed to master a few tricks now like no hands riding, peddle dismounts, coasting down a hill with legs over the bars and I am getting the hang of balancing on the thing stationary. Oh yes the newspaper article, The lies!!! its amazing what these reporters seem to be able to pull out of thin air haha although he did get most of the things i told him right. DIRTY6 yes that pic is of one of the 6 other penny farthing riders on the tour, there are also about 16 vintage safety bicycle aswell. Anyway thats my internet just about up, I will put some pics up of the ride next week when i get home.

Well I think i can call this project finished and I will report if its been successful after the ride haha. Both of the bikes are done, I had a big assembly day last Sunday and I have ridden them around the block a couple of times now and they both go really well. I haven't got any pictures of them both together yet but i just took a few of my bike so here's a big pic dump of it all finished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight's job is to wrap it all up ready for its trip down to chch in the plane with me tomorrow night. The ride that i'm doing starts in Arundel at 11pm Tuesday. The ride ends at Akaora on Friday after about 180km of riding. Im doing the chch swapmeet on saturday as well which should be a pretty good event.

Well the bikes are nearly finished now which is good because im flying down to chch next Monday to start the ride! The top coat color has also been sprayed on all the parts.

One of the last jobs that had to be done was to make the handlebars. I originally thought i was going to have to find someone with a tube bender and mandrels suitable for the job but i managed to find some 2.5mm wall hydraulic tube and this bent very easily without wanting to collapse at all. The handle bars are bent with a hump in them to clear your legs at the top of the peddle stroke. There is a piece of threaded rod welded into one end for the bars to screw into the head assembly 

 

Starting the bend 

 

With a little bit of heat on the outside of the bend the tube just pulled around 

 

And bending the other side to match (the hard part!)

 

I got the bars and all the fasteners nickel plated, i did all the polishing myself to save time and cost at the platers. I can highly recommend Electroless Coating Systems Glenfield for any nickle plating you want done, top service and they do a very good job.

 

I also did the grips, for those i raided my dads file draw, i was lucky i found 2 with exactly the same wooden handles 

 

After trimming a bit of each end a putting a 5/8 hole up the middle and giving them a good sand they looked like this 

 

And stuck onto the bars, they are still wet with the first coat of sealer, there are a couple coats of varnish to go on yet.

 

All going to plan final assembly of both bikes should be tomorrow night

I have basically finished off every thing that needed making on my bike now, all that's left is handlebars and paint which i will hopefully start this week.

 

As i said before i was hoping to make my forks more like the originals, they are all done now and i am extremely pleased with how they have turned out.

 

Pics....

 

I started with this head casting. I got it from the guy in Oamaru, it's a steel casting that was taken off an original bike. 

 

I cut of the handle bar spigot as it was to small for the 5/8" handle bar tube that i wanted to use. I got it in the 4 jaw running as true as i could get it and then machined the 2 degree taper down the length of it. I then drilled and reamed the hole for the adjusting bolt to 1/2" for the next step.

 

 

I found a 1/2" center drill with a broken of end so i could modify it with out feeling bad, i welded it to a 1/2" rod and then ended up with a long center drill.

 

With the long drill running really nicely in the reamed hole i cut the bottom bearing surface, the long center drill worked well and didn't wander at all when i started drilling. After that was done i bored it out some more and tapped it to 5/8" UNF.

 

That finished off the head and i started on the fork tubes.

 

For those i used the squashed round tube i got from Oamaru. The problem was that i didn't like the look of the long straight tubes when all the other parts on the bike were tapered so all i did was cut a big long triangle section out of them and welded them back up.

 

 

Tacked back together 

 

And all welded up. These long welds were good practice for my tig welding, im slowly getting better at it. I get to do a tig course next year through my apprenticeship so im really looking forward to some proper instruction.

 

For the fork end detail i just cut out some blocks and welded them on.

 

Cut to shape and roughly filed up.

 

And after final shaping and sanding with the bearing carriers fitted.

 

Once all that was done i welded the 2 fork tubes to the machined head. I did a few plug welds aswell to make sure its as strong as it can be. Once that was done i gave it a good file up to fair it all in.

 

 

The other problem with these fork tubes is that when the round was squashed flat i don't think they had a proper former in it so it was hollow in the middle. This didn't look to good either. Ever since seeing Manu's pics of leading his Ariel tank i wanted to give that a go, these fork tubes were the perfect thing to do so. I asked a good panel beater friend of mine if he would give me a hand and show how it was done so i got some pics of the process.

 

First thing was getting the surface perfectly clean and getting some flux on it. 

 

Then tin the whole surface with the body solder 

 

Next was getting the lead on. It was a fairly big stick and you heat the end up with the torch until a lump falls of onto the bit of steel you just preheated.

 

 

You work your way along until there are lumps of lead stuck to the length of the part. The key to the whole thing seemed to get all the lead on in one go so you don't have to put more on later over the top of it. He told me that it is much easier to file of excess lead than put more on.

 

After that was done you go round and using a wooden shaper heat up each lump of lead at push it around until it is roughly the shape you want.

 

 

After all the lead was on i gave it a real good scrub in water to get rid of all the flux and this is what the forks looked like

 

Now for the fun? part, I dug out my dads body file and got into it. After the basic shaping it looked like this. It happened pretty quick because the lead is very easy to file as you can imagine. 

 

And what they looked like after finial filling and sanding. I have also machined up a new handle bar spigot and welded it on, its also tapped 5/8 UNF for the bars to screw into

 

 

 

I also finished of and painted the rear saddle mount and spring. The leather saddle is riveted on with big copper rivets. 

 

The front seat mounts ready to be cut out 

 

All fitted up with the front mounts bent to shape. I also set up the adjusting screw in the rotary table and milled a 1/2" hex on it for your spanner to go on. 

 

And how the bike looks at the moment. I am wrapped with how the forks have turned out and they now look like they were in 1870.

 

If i had handlebars i could ride the thing, i am going to strip it down and hopefully get primer on both the bikes this week. The ride that im doing on it is less then a month away now so hopefully the painting process will go smoothly and then i might even be able to get a bit of practice in! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have made up the first set of forks now, i just need to make the handle bar mount and weld it on. These forks are for my mates bike

This is the steering and neck assembly, very simple but effective. The thread at the top is 5/8 UNF. It will have a lock nut to hold it in the right position when it is all set up. I got my dad to weld the pin on as it's the highest stressed part on the bike and I'm not really keen on it breaking of when I'm up on top of the thing haha

Fork ends i made earlier welded into the tubes with the bearing carriers fitted

Getting it all set up ready to weld in the steering assembly

And all welded up with the fork rake and wheelbase set

I have made up most of the bits to put my forks together now, they are going to be different to this set and much more like they were in 1870 with a cast head arrangement and taped fork tubes and a few other different details. This should make them much nicer looking than the standard forks for these replicas

Ok i have made a fair bit of progress since the last update. First of all i have drilled the holes in the rims for the spokes, all 400 of them! I painted the rims gloss black with base and clear. 

 

Then it was the job of cutting and threading the spokes and lacing all the bits up. All 4 wheels are done now which i am very pleased with because they are definitely  the trickiest bit of the build.

 

This was the tool my mate lent me for rolling the threads on the spokes. Its pretty old and i imagine it has done a few thousand spokes in its life. Rolling the thread takes less than 10 seconds. 

 

 

Here are some pics of lacing up one of the big wheels, i didn't take any of the small wheels as they are pretty standard.

 

Put all the spokes in the hub

 

 

The first side in with the nipples loosely on

 

 

The other side going in 

 

I found the perfect jig to true them up in the scrap at work so i just tacked the bearing carriers on top of it. Truing up the wheels was a long job and the big ones took around 4 hours each to do with the 72 spokes to tighten up. 

 

 

And all done with the tyres on

 

Mock up.....

 

 

 

 

Next job is making up the front forks 

I had an awesome few days in Oamaru making penny farthing bits, we managed to get all the stuff i needed finished so hopefully the bikes will go together pretty quickly now.

 

For the front and rear rims we first had to form the round tube into a crescent shaped section. This is done by pulling the tube through a set of rollers with an electric winch, you have to do 3 passes through the rollers to get the right section.

 

We then rolled the crescent section into a circle, This only takes a couple of minutes. Both of the front rims have been rolled to 52 inch diameter.

 

And the rear rims, we could roll 3 at a time.

 

The backbones were rolled to fit the rims.

 

Lastly we did the tyres. First you cut the rubber to length and set it up in the machine.

 

You then tension the wire and this compresses the rubber into itself untill it fits tightly onto the rim.

You lock the wire in place with the 2 cap screws and remove the tyre from the machine, you then silver solder the ends of the wire together.

Once you undo the 2 cap screws and remove the locking jig the rubber completely covers the join and you are left with the finished tyre. These solid tyres will do two lengths of New Zealand before they need replacing.

 

And this is the pile of bits at the end of the weekend. 

 

 

 

The next job is to drill all the holes in the rims and paint them ready for lacing up.