ThePog

I have a friend here in chch who is performing madness with a Fiat 128 and a mid mounted supercharged 2 litre twincam, He has been building it for more than ten years, longer than I have known him, but it is nearing completion now... http://www.turbo124.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8279

I think you need an engineers eye cast over the problem in the flesh. Which side of town are you?

Actually I think a better solution would be to shorten the tube you added in, and make the white ones steering tube parallel to the red ones seat post and leave a ~10mm gap between the two and fill it with something then weld....?

Just do a single horizontal bar from the bottom bar of the white one to the seatpost of the red...?

I see what you are carrying is a mere 1.5 meters in length, longbike laughs at the paltry carrying capacity of your steed.

So longbike has a friend now, I built this up out of a massive shitty old roadbike I got off TM for a fiddy. 700c rims, postie 5 speed. goes much faster than longbike for some unfathomable reason. I even built my own wheel for it, which turned out to be piss easy actually.

I like the bottom one better, the rear handlebar mount can be a stem off the seat post like you have. the frame will be cleaner looking then. I have a MIG you can use if you want.

It's got a brand new bottom bracket already, hopefully the spacings will work ok. You can get brand new Sturmey Archer stuff from Velo Ideale; http://www.velo-ideale.com/ He is a good dude to deal with, he is fizzing over longbike as well which is gratifying. I have a 3 speed SA dynohub in my garage if you are interested, it needs new bearing cones probably, but the AW type ones go for ever so would be good for another hundred years probably.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=385707645 $20 cant go too far wrong, pretty sure they are not the top end ones but meh

Na crankrings are shitty pressed steel jobbies, flex like fuck and spot welded/rivetted together. I found what I wanted on TM last night anyway, shimano bolting type cranks for $20, also have already bought a 48 tooth sprocket altho this is one of the spastic biopace ones, will have to see how that works out... I have been thinking about a MKII version which will incorporate many improvements + be made properly rather than thrown together. If this happens then this one might be surplus to requirements. It owes me an unfortunate amount of money tho, so start saving now.

Stop using autocad. Edit: sorry that was unduly harsh, it is just that a little part of me dies when I see autocad in use...

Painted longbike this weekend.... Looks nice from far/far from nice, the rust converter I put on made life difficult. Plus it is a little lighter than I wanted. Still it achieves a level of civility that it lacked before. I also brought an old Brooks B66 which looked sweet on it but made my hammies go spastic, so swapped back the old one. I might try and find a skinnier one... I nearly died the other day on the way to work through lack of stopping power, so I dropped by the cycle shop and purchased some sidepull MTB brakes so it could stop properly, now it does. Also purchased a new long stem - should be here tuesday. Also made up a longer shift cable, this meant I could route it properly. Also looking for proper cranks - giz. That is all.

yea I have a normal bike with derailleurs etc, but I swear I can go faster on longbike for a given situation - those hubs have a high mechanical efficiency compared to a normal setup, something like 90-95% transmission efficiency depending on the gear you are in. Also BTW I saw 45km/hr coming down Wigram road today - a new longbike personal best....

Ha, now that the daily commute on this has my thighs looking like fucking tree trunks I tend to see all but the most serious lycra boys as an easily attainable challenge - I passed one a couple of days who was sitting on about 25km/hr - I was cranking at a large fraction of light speed (37km/hr), it must have seemed like being passed by a fucking freight train. It must be depressing to be totally ruled by something so stupid and massive riding such a ridiculous looking bike...

Poor thing actually failed me the other day, stalling and spluttering really quite badly. $550 later it runs sweet as a nut again. I am not sure how the mechanic achieved this figure as the issue was the distributor cap and that was a relative bargain at $170. Fucking euros

So I have found a pretty good replacement for the brake reservoir on the X - off a 1992 Toyota Estima. The outlet tubes are a size too big so need reducers to work, but for $25 all up I am pretty happy with the result. At least I now have one car that is actually fucking driveable if I need it.

Got slightly sidetracked with longbike and other shit + when I filled the new engine up with oil it all fell out of the cracked side cover I didnt know about, so kind of got the shits with it. Get back onto it soon tho, be keen for a burn with other scoots. I have a million bits, all stacked up on a pallet - what you want? two frames there if anyone is keen, Horse25/David was interested just now but it would be a job to get a working bike out of what is there. Be a start tho. yea saw Andy, bike looked sweet as, hope he got it going again

Stripped the hubs, one is ok, one is fucked. I found some cash so decided to just buy a new hub anyway and use the good secondhand one in something else so this is todays effort; Shifter cable is too short bit I will sort that later. Otherwise it is mint, can hit warp factor 9 no probs now.

yea I welded a couple of extra supports at the front for this exact situation, must make an excuse to plumb some shit

Got a very wet arse on the run home Monday evening, decided that mudguards were probably the ticket so got these real steel bad boys from Velo Ideale for $40, I kind of like the rust vs very shiny thing going on; Also took off the new bars etc as it all looked way too technical and serious, but I needed a very long stem so I could use a spare set of Raleigh bars I had, behold the roughness; Perfect riding position tho In other news, I purchased these two Sram P5 internal gear hubs off TM, no idea of completeness or condition but shit they were cheap; IGH goodness will follow shortly.

Treated longbike to a new set of handlebars + quill stem adaptor + adjustable stem, it is like riding an armchair now... I tried swapping the seat for an old sprung one that I had lying around, unfortunately it isn't in top condition and it felt like someone was banging a nail into your perineum, so I swapped back the old one. I have decided to put 700C rims on it for extra largeness - does anyone have a spare set lying around that I could purchase? I chucked on the ones from my other bike which mostly fitted, I will need to move the brake mounts and/or buy a different fork for it.

I found this, which sort of makes sense; http://www.dclxvi.org/chunk/tech/trail/ I would have thought the rake would need to be increased, not decreased, but straight forks would increase the trail in this case. I have found most mountainbikes are twitchy in this respect, it is usually pretty hard to ride them with no hands, but my old 10 speed based single speed is totally bulletproof for no hands... and that looks like it has more rake and a lot of wheel to stem offset.. Longbike is based on an old MB, obviously enough has changed in the geometry to effectively reduce the trail or at least make the amount of trail (or lack) more noticeable. So I can either try straight forks or more rake?

So I have a bike geometry q for all you knowledgeable kernts out there.... Longbike, while superior in nearly every aspect of performance/load carrying ability/awesome etc, has a handling issue in that you simply cannot let go of the bars in an upright position without the fuckers darting to one side and making you poo your pants a little bit. It is actually not enough of a problem to make me not ride it, but it would be good too see if this can be improved. Having pondered the issue during the many miles I have now covered on this beast I have decide that it is either about the angle of the steering pivot line or the distance between the steering pivot line and the front axle. So what I want to know is this; which is the most likely culprit so I can make this better? Thanks in advance.

I'd say the top one would be best, looks like it has equal(ish) length primaries + it is a 4 into 1 which will probably be peakier at the expense of low down torque. Also cast manifolds are poos cos I say so.

Fucking sweet, smooth riding perfection. The only problem now is the single gear - I max it out everywhere now. I just need to find that internal geared hub from somewhere.