Finished Pics!

Really, I'm done. Well except for new Avid Vbrakes that are on the way. Eventually it will get a new crankset with bigger rings, and I'll be putting my Speedplay Frog pedals on soon.

I got a pair of Swalbe Marathon Racer 26x1.5 tires for a really good deal from http://www.davesbicyclerepair.com/ for a great price, $30 each. Those tires cost more than the rest of the bike! It rides great with those tires.

I wanted a rack on the back, but it would have to be an expensive adjustable rack to fit. Those cost about $60. I got a piece of 1/4" aluminum bar stock and some 1/16" thick aluminum angles at Home Depot for $7. I had a couple of pieces of 1/8" angle in my scrap bin. That and some stainless screws and flat black paint was all it took.

Homebuilt Long Wheelbase Recumbent

I knew I was in trouble when I started reading the homebuilders forum at http://www.bentrideronline.com/. I am an incurable do-it-yourselfer. I love buying tools. Homebuilding a bike gave me an excuse to get a MIG welder and a MAP torch.


I've been very interested in the new Rans Xstream and I wanted to try my hand at building a bike from recycled parts. Here we have a Yahoo group called Freecycle. You can only post things that you are giving away, or you can ask for stuff. I posted an ad saying I wanted any old bikes. One person gave me three bikes, one of them a very nice Ross MTB bike that a neighbor had left with him when they moved, and two of his daughters old bikes. I picked up an old ten speed in my neighborhood that someone had set out for trash. The Ross was rideable and the one thing I really liked was the center pull cantilever brakes. It had 6 speed SIS components as well. Not high end, but they work.

I copied my Strada's Euromesh seat using 1/2" EMT. The top tube is oval, from one of the WalMart girls bikes. The bottom tube fit in the top tube which makes it very strong when welded. The bottom tubes are from the Ross, again the smaller tube is in the larger, and I used one short piece of tubing from the ten speed. The rear triangle is Ross on top and WM on the bottom so that I could use the rear brake from the Ross. The BB is from the Ross, so I used the WM bike for the bottom of the rear triangle.

The riser is 3/4" EMT. I brazed on part of the Ross's headset to hold the bars. I bent the handlebars from an aluminum tent pole that I had. I really like the feel of tweeners on my Bacchetta, and just copied the setup.

I just rode it around the neighborhood. The wheel flop at real slow speeds goes away as soon as you get going. I like it! I'm going to strip it down and grind the welds and paint it with Krylon Hammered spray paint. These are the before pics:

Longleaf Trace Birthday Challenge

Went to Prentiss for the Birthday Challenge Saturday. The challenge was to ride your age in kilometers. I wanted to at least double mine, so I rode the whole Trace - 41 miles. We took it pretty easy for the first 30 miles and stopped a lot to socialize. A lot of the folks I was riding with turned back. I decided to push on to Hattiesburg. It was pretty much all downhill into Hburg, which meant it was all uphill on the way back. I wanted to make the 3pm drawing for the free bike, so I pushed pretty hard on the way back. I was suffering for the last 25 miles.
Total mileage 82. Time on the bike was 5:12, total time 6:04. I did make it back for the drawing, but didn't win. The birthday cake was good!