I needed a week off work to take a break. I also needed to make the distance between the saddle and the pedals bigger on my bike. So cue "CrapBike II week" (CBIIweek for short), in which I modify my bike a bit.
Today was going to be the big day - finish the bike, ride it home, make a cool video - you name it. And it so nearly was.
I started by applying the second coat of black Hammerite, because a lot of Cerise paint was still showing through. I've still left a little for old-time's sake, but it is now mostly back. I then took a break for lunch, as my mate wanted to use the drive to change his oil, and my next job was carpentry.
After lunch I kept on with the painting, doing all the yellow pin-striping. This is unsurprisingly tricky using a "Crayola" brand child's paint brush, even more so when one's using it to apply Hammerite. Before the brush got too bad I painted the bike's name on, trying my best to mimic the great Swiss typeface, but ending up with what I'll term "Neue Brush Grotesque".
Then I got out the powertools and started smashing up some wood. I cut out the seat backs from 12mm ply using circular and reciprocating saws, and also made some sideplates to keep the three bits of 2x4 together. After a few minutes with a surform (the results of a plane and a rasp/file gettin' jiggy with it) and some sandpaper I ended up with some fairly smooth wood. Screws and PVA hold the whole structure together, in the traditional fashion.
I then padded the seat with some foam and covered it with an old jumper. Although one traditional staples upholstery, I want to add more foam in, so used wood screws which, on the most part, worked pretty well. It's ended up pretty comfortable, for short seated periods at least.
I then started assembling the bike for what was meant to be the last time. Instead of going through all the details I made a timelapse video:
And then came the disaster.
I gave the bike a little test run. A very little test run, in fact, as I uncovered a serious flaw.
When I added the seat, I raised the riding position by a couple of inches. The resulting change in rider geometry means the to pedal my knees have to travel through the handlebars. This is both unpleasant and incredibly difficult.
I mooted a few solutions to fix it, and tried a couple of quick ones, like bending the handlebars, but the best is grinding off the gooseneck and rewelding it to a different tube at a different angle. As this is a somewhat involved job, I couldn't really start it at 7PM tonight, so I'm back tomorrow to finish the bike. Definitely...
