Wednesday, September 01, 2010

No, I'm not drunk or high...

...but I'm starting to wish I was, as the novocaine wears off. 1.5 root canals down, .5 to go (next week) and then some crowns. Ouch, both literally and figuratively.

I have nothing but good things to say about Dr. Poczatek, though. She is awesome, and she kept me quite entertained ("Can you smoke pot at the Eldorado Springs pool?") through the whole ordeal.

Anyway, before the mouth started hurting in earnest, I did a little work on the latest project - Brad's silly bike. I bet you can guess why I had to turn parts of my Anvil frame and chainstay fixtures backwards (if you can't, it's because this is going to use 36" wheels). It's like Don designed them to be able to build really crazy stuff on purpose...

Anyway, this frame will use a 150mm maxle rear end (Paragon makes a compatible sliding dropout). Thanks to the length of the dropouts (part of the reason I'm using them, actually) I can *just barely* get away with using Nova "Mad Max" chainstays - these babies are a massive 1.5" on the long axis - they're the beefiest (mountain bike) thing going, and we wanted as much stiffness as possible.

I attached the chainstays first because this is going to be a VERY unconventional bike. I've got a curved seat tube (Brad bent it himself) and it will sit on top of the downtube, rather than directly on the BB shell (I'll probably do a little bracing of that joint just to beef things up). Additionally, it will use twin toptubes, so believe it or not, the seat tube is going in either second to last or last - I've yet to decide which.

Welding in chainstays with no seat tube there was really odd. I found myself having trouble because the usual obstructions/hand bracing positions available with a seat tube weren't there. But it came together just fine in the end.

More pics tomorrow as I start working on the main triangle. Should be a fun build.

3 comments:

D V Praveen said...

I'm eager to see how it shapes up.

Anonymous said...

If ever there was a frame to build while heavily medicated, it's a 36er.

Have fun with this.

cartographer

Anonymous said...

Another 36er

http://www.bolognabikes.com/Page_2.php