last night, I made the plunge. After a quick trip with Bubba to Harbor Freight I had a welder and and angle grinder. The thing to know about that place is that their prices are not exactly fixed. Always check their internet price. If you print it out they will always honor it; And, it is generally 20% lower. So following my own advice I checked online to find a welder that was $119. Then, having been dissapointed in the past, I called to find out if they had the model I wanted in stock. After a few minutes on hold, I learned that the last reamining model was out on the floor for display. To my good fortune, they were not going to sell me the floor model. Instead, I was offered the welder that was $199 in substitution. Free upgrade!
Now for a short lesson on welders. Welders are rated in several ways: amperage or current, voltage, and duty cycle. In my case, the original welder I was after had a duty cycle of 18% on low and 10% on high. Duty cycles translate into the amoutn of time you can use the welder in a 10 minute period (i.e. 10% = 1 minute of welding followed by 9 minutes of waiting). High duty cycles (up to 100%) are nice for personal use and essential for industrial application. In industry, if an employee who is welding has to stop and wait, then money is essentially being wasted . At home, it just gets frustrating to wait. Cutting to the chase, the welder I purchased in substitution has a duty cycle of 40% on low and 25% on high. Bottom line, I won.
So I hurried back to the dump--my backyard--and prepared to weld something. First order of business was the pesky cheese grater that needed a small spot weld. I blew a hole right trough it in about 3 seconds. Encore, was a knarly bead, surrounded by splatter and slag. Sweet. The grater is now customized and saved from a previously ineveitable trip to the dumpster. So far, total price to fix the cheese grater was roughly $150. That includes a welder, grinder, face shield, flux wire and electricity. If you need a cheese grater recycled do not hesitate to give me a call. I will make you a sweet deal. Just for my good friends I will fix their graters at a 75% discount. That is only $37.50 to restore your precious kitchen gadget. But, I digress.
Itching to bring a tall bike to life, I rapidly dismantled the extra mountain bike that I had in the back of my truck. This is a girls bike I found on the side of a road. The rear wheel is missing a spoke and the rear tube is 24" while the wheel is actually 26." Needless to say, this is a fine steed. Less than half an hour later--with the bike nearly dissasembled--I was implementing my hacksaw, which I pulled out of a dumpster, to cut the chain stay in order to remove the chain. This saw wasn't working well until I reversed the blade. Apparantly the yokel who threw this saw out didn't understand that the teeth are supposed to cut on the forward stroke. A long two minutes later, with a cramping the chain is off and still in one piece. Now to remove the last remaining problem. There were a number of cable guides on the bike. With an adjustable wrench I torque sideways on these buggers and they popped right off. Number of working bikes, aquired for free, now converted to a pile of parts: 2.
Being excited, and in a hurry, I flipped one bike frame over and stacked the other on top of it. Using a broomstick to line up the head tubes, I tacked the two frames together with some knarly welds. Then, I sat back a looked at it. I started to feel like it just wasn't lookign tall enough. I stared at is some more and it failed to impress me. It was 10:30pm and I had to get up at 6:00am the next morning, so I decided to give up for the night. Like most of my good ideas, the tallbike (1 word?) robbed me of sleep last night and took away ability to focus on other tasks today. Not really a problem. I enjoy it mostly. There is a certain look that creeps into my eyes. It warns you that I will stop at nothing to complete the task at hand.
Now for a short lesson on welders. Welders are rated in several ways: amperage or current, voltage, and duty cycle. In my case, the original welder I was after had a duty cycle of 18% on low and 10% on high. Duty cycles translate into the amoutn of time you can use the welder in a 10 minute period (i.e. 10% = 1 minute of welding followed by 9 minutes of waiting). High duty cycles (up to 100%) are nice for personal use and essential for industrial application. In industry, if an employee who is welding has to stop and wait, then money is essentially being wasted . At home, it just gets frustrating to wait. Cutting to the chase, the welder I purchased in substitution has a duty cycle of 40% on low and 25% on high. Bottom line, I won.
So I hurried back to the dump--my backyard--and prepared to weld something. First order of business was the pesky cheese grater that needed a small spot weld. I blew a hole right trough it in about 3 seconds. Encore, was a knarly bead, surrounded by splatter and slag. Sweet. The grater is now customized and saved from a previously ineveitable trip to the dumpster. So far, total price to fix the cheese grater was roughly $150. That includes a welder, grinder, face shield, flux wire and electricity. If you need a cheese grater recycled do not hesitate to give me a call. I will make you a sweet deal. Just for my good friends I will fix their graters at a 75% discount. That is only $37.50 to restore your precious kitchen gadget. But, I digress.
Itching to bring a tall bike to life, I rapidly dismantled the extra mountain bike that I had in the back of my truck. This is a girls bike I found on the side of a road. The rear wheel is missing a spoke and the rear tube is 24" while the wheel is actually 26." Needless to say, this is a fine steed. Less than half an hour later--with the bike nearly dissasembled--I was implementing my hacksaw, which I pulled out of a dumpster, to cut the chain stay in order to remove the chain. This saw wasn't working well until I reversed the blade. Apparantly the yokel who threw this saw out didn't understand that the teeth are supposed to cut on the forward stroke. A long two minutes later, with a cramping the chain is off and still in one piece. Now to remove the last remaining problem. There were a number of cable guides on the bike. With an adjustable wrench I torque sideways on these buggers and they popped right off. Number of working bikes, aquired for free, now converted to a pile of parts: 2.
Being excited, and in a hurry, I flipped one bike frame over and stacked the other on top of it. Using a broomstick to line up the head tubes, I tacked the two frames together with some knarly welds. Then, I sat back a looked at it. I started to feel like it just wasn't lookign tall enough. I stared at is some more and it failed to impress me. It was 10:30pm and I had to get up at 6:00am the next morning, so I decided to give up for the night. Like most of my good ideas, the tallbike (1 word?) robbed me of sleep last night and took away ability to focus on other tasks today. Not really a problem. I enjoy it mostly. There is a certain look that creeps into my eyes. It warns you that I will stop at nothing to complete the task at hand.
So, I spend this morning daydreaming, reading, and calculating. 1 spreadsheet, 2 digital image drawings, and a few sheets of paper later I am ready to tear the two frames apart and try a different design. Using my calculations and bits of knowledge gleaned from a variety of websites, I can now explain why my origin plan yielded a bike that was shorter than my new option. The new version will be 15% taller using the same two frames. See the picture for the layman's explanation. Along the way, I learned the proper names for the various tubes that the frame is comprised of and how to measure their lengths and relative angles. Using excel, I created a spreadsheat that can project maximum safe saddle height--relative to the ground--and seat tube height based on chain stay run (horizontal length) and seat tube angle. In the end, it turns out that flipping the lower frame is not a good idea if you are trying to maximize the bike height. The downside is the seat seats further back from the center of gravity. Jsut a side note, I set the max height equation in a way to limit the furthest back saddle position to be directly above the rear hub. It seems like a bad idea to position my body behind the center of the wheel, although it would be interesting. Maybe, I could weld on a smaller wheel to be used as a wheelie bar...
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