Death Trap Mark Three! Photos of push bikes

I miss mountain biking.

I lived in Bristol for 6 years, and went on the local trails 2-3 times a week, and out to wales about once a fortnight. I had a couple of BSO's including a 24 inch wheel Trek when I was a kid. I had to spend 1/2 an hour after every ride (not even serious off road) maintaining it. First proper bike was a Specialised Rockhopper. Lovely steel frame (back in '97), rigid with v brakes (which were high tech at the time). Was doing a lot of fast off road and it was lovely. Since then got the Klein Attitude in my gap year, and spent about three years upgrading as bits broke before upgrading the frame to a Rocky Mountain full sus, which i still have. I raced the klein and it was absolutely superb for that. With super stiff lightweight wheels, 100m fox forks, and narrow flat bars, most of my uni club couldn't understand how I rode it, but I loved it, went up hill as fast as it went down. The klein snapped after this when I set it up as a singlespeed. It was awesome, the power transmission was instant, and never had to worry about being in the right gear (you were never in the right gear, so dont; worry about it.) and even on the steep techinical climbs, you just stood up and cranked it over the rocks.

Recently acquired a rigid On-one frame to re-build the singlespeed, which I love. You really have to be on the ball when riding it, but its so sure footed over the slow, really technical stuff. and scampers up the single track. (nothing too fast and rocky though, bounce around so much you get a headache and can't see where you are going).

[Jayneflakes]

Time for an update, progress seems to be coming easily and my mate Gareth is really cracking on with it. We now have the top bottom bracket in place and the roller that changes the direction of the chain.







The final few jobs will be to sort out the stearing, which is going to be between my knees. We plan to use a proper handle bar and not just a coupe of bits of string! I hope to have a test ride very soon, which should be a lot of fun. I fully expect to crash though as I get used to the monster!

Expect more silly updates as they come!

[BanannaMan]

It does looks awesome Jayne!
Quite a bit of work gone into that.

Just wondering though, (not trying to be an ar$e)
Will you able to take off on it from a stop?
Those pedals look really high!

Is the steering going under the knees or over ? I know you said between but I`ve seen a couple of these locally and they were both very different in their setup . You doing an outrigger wheel for swift stops or are you chancing it with getting a foot down ? . Looking good so far .

[Jayneflakes]

The steering should be on a high level stem infront of my chest. I did think about under seat steering with linkages, but the work involved was far too complicated and I did not fancy crashing right onto my little fingers!

I have ridden these sort of bikes before and am used to the strange starting position. The tip is to scoot along on your toes for a meter to start rolling and then get onto the pedals. Crashing at this point is not always optional!

[Sir Trev]

Originally Posted by Jayneflakes

Good to see you have the snack dispenser in place Jayne but won't it make the seat a little uncomfortable?

[Jayneflakes]

Originally Posted by Sir Trev

Good to see you have the snack dispenser in place Jayne but won't it make the seat a little uncomfortable?

Ha haha, that is my fuel tank! The engine that runs this bike works very well on sweets and fizzy drinks!

[Bibio]

Jayne. why didn't you just use some old idler wheels from gears instead of the bearing?

[Jayneflakes]

Originally Posted by Bibio

Jayne. why didn't you just use some old idler wheels from gears instead of the bearing?

I am not sure what you mean by idler wheels to be honest.

The reason for the bearing being there is because the chain has to change direction while under load. The spindle it runs on is a huge steel bolt that is about 16mm thick This should be able to deal with the load of generated by the chain running over it while pushing hard on the pedals.

This bike is made almost entirely out of scrap and spare parts. The bearing I used came from our old XJ550 and has a slight wobble to it, however it works well enough for this. The only part of this bike that is of any worth is the rear wheel which came from one of my old racing mountain bikes. It is an old XT hub with a set of stainless DT spokes and an Araya double wall rim. I picked up another couple of knackered bikes this week and stripped them to the bare frames. This gives me a whole load of steel, more junk parts and yet more duff wheels!

If anyone wants any old duff bits, give me a shout and I may have what you want.

[Bibio]

the cogs that the chain goes round on the rear derailleur.