Reid's Stealth Cruiser: Float your eBOAT? Ideas, anyone? p22

[Reid Welch]

BTW, folks, most of my videos are super boring, but not the next video, I promise.

Well done, Reid.
Everything seems perfect now.
Will we see the fountain ride? I'm curious about it.
I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Splish splash,
Georg

Spish Splash, Georg.
That stunt should be coming up fairly soon or I'll be a wet blanket!

[Reid Welch]

130 miles on the new bike so far. It is making friends wherever I stop and chat.
People all have to be shown that it is a pedal bike PLUS "free power" on demand;
no complicated multispeed gearing is needed here at all. It'd be a different story if we had hills here.
It scoots across intersections from a standing start, keeping right up with traffic
or with the fastest, fittest Lycras.

"I want one!" says the young security guard at the local bank.

I am not going to be driving my car for the little local errands anymore.

The range of the bike with its Ping 36/20 appears to be about 35 miles unassisted;
so my normal depth of discharge is quite low, as most trips are under 10 miles.

This is a pleasure and errand bike. I don't work so it's not a commuter, and there are no hills,
though I can maintain 20mph up a 4% grade (a bridge) if I pedal assist.

My only regret now is that I wish I'd gotten the 48/20 Ping...maybe next year.

It sure is fun to bomb around the sunken park at high speeds, bump, bump, bang!
And nothing breaks! And I'm out of shape and fifty five years old next month.
If I were thirty again...high speed and an e-bmx for me!

At thirty, this same house, and even then: rear wheel brakes only:

[Reid Welch]

74F, 4AM, sea level, no breeze,

no traffic, no stops of any sort. Flatland.

36V/20Ah PING battery.
ATF-oil filled motor (to lube the planet/ring gear contact)
THIS TECHNIQUE OF OIL IS AN EXPERIMENT, not a recommendation for others.

It is an eZee front hub motor kit, bought, like the Ping, at full retail direct from the vendor.


The pair of featured articles got their first near-realistic workouts late last night when all sane people sleep and dream....







Steel hard tail, 150lb-me, 60lb bike, Thud Buster, eZee front, Bontrager Big Hanks, a mere 10PSI in in the nearly unloaded front;
20 PSI in the rear; these are "giant" cross-section tires relatively speaking, and need very little pressure...
like auto tires lightly loaded would need only low pressure. Big load trucks run 90PSI for a reason: to bear the load v. cross section.
Low, very low rolling resistance tires. Wind resistance: massive for the tires above 20 and for leaned-back, fully upright-me.

Absolutely non-aero stance; I was looking at the stars.

[Reid Welch]

"I was looking at the stars but I was thinking about you"
(a song title I just made up)

I am a parodist, and a great big nut.
I like to cut pretension into little cubes of stale cheese to serve with toothpicks.
Off topic, not really; same home, same mechanic, 25 years later; this is silly humour.

Like it or not...
Have fun!

[The Stig]

haha good pictures

[Reid Welch]

haha good pictures

Thank you, Stig.

[Reid Welch]

A popular type, made with differences of minor importance by many factories, is the four-horse power single cylinder shown here. The motor is hung as low in the frame as possible, to bring the center of gravity low; the seat, well provided with springs, is also placed so low that the rider's feet can touch the ground: the gasoline and lubricating oil tanks are carried below the top bar and are shaped to fit the frame; the wheels are 28 inches diameter, steel rims and fitted with detachable tires; a coaster brake is used in the rear wheel and usually some form of spring fork is used to lessen vibration.

There is no front brake at all. This is a machine design-centered for about 20mph.

Source

So there, Doubting Thomases! Mud roads, hills, little traffic, brass balls, a moped more than a modern motorcycle.
Front brakes then were considered incredibly complicated to make well, and hellishly dangerous. Try one on mud or dirt and see.

I emphasize again, that virtually all vehicles of any nature were rear-wheel braked only. It was not that engineers were stupid, but that two things were in their choice of favor: convention and design. It is MUCH more challenging to make a front wheel brake, because the front wheel steers...this is especially true with four wheeled, front-steering vehicles. At long, long last, in 1924, the auto industry was forced by example and PR, to design and fit four wheel brakes. The Model T, alive through 1927, did not follow suit.

Brakes then were mechanical linkages in almost all installations, and required constant equalization adjustment, testing, maintenance.
Yet, they stopped so much faster, that all wise motorists in the mid-twenties carried warning plates, often one in front, printed in mirror image, "FOUR WHEEL BRAKES", and always, a rear warning placard put into the triangle of the rear, spare tire: FOUR WHEEL BRAKES. This warned Fordists and others to keep a safe following distance, or else!

Bikes are better by far with front wheel brakes. They still travel at 15 to 20 mph, and unless competing with modern traffic, in traffic,
a rear wheel brake-only may suffice; it certainly did for fifty or one hundred years, on many, nearly all bikes. Spoon brakes on front were exceptions, inadequate, but reasonably safe.

Nothing like a front wheel lockup on wet or muddy pavement to put a man off his bike's super-duper brakes, fast. Blow a tire, bang ur hd, or worst: the crsh (personally experienced) of an un-seasonsed, Varsity-riding child, on a slimy, wet sidewalk at a mere three miles per hour. It was my first ride on the birthday present. Not before, not since, had I hever crashed a coaster brake bike due to bad braking technique.
We had coaster brakes, used them instinctively, and never strayed from within their limits. Shift backwards, young man!
Sheldon Brown, et all, were and are wrong on this modern mental aberration of "front brakes required!" Horsefeathers!
Unless you do long downhills at high speeds and lack featherbeds at the bottoms. Tie a pillow to your head, fred!


Vorpal Sword Reid

[Reid Welch]

I'm healed. If you recall from another thread (search " header 20 mph), my bike pole vaulted.
The eZee remained in the lawyer-lipped steel fork, but wound its wires, breaking at least one hall sensor wire.

I =could= salvage the fork: it appears nearly perfect, not bent; just spread lips.

Good old Coral Way Bike Shop They were closed today: USA's Labor day,
but the co-owner happened to be in the shop doing little things. The door was locked. I wave the fork at him.

"No problem! That's from one of our Miami "Sunkruiser" bikes, right? Call me tomorrow late and I'll confirm that the local distributor will send us a new fork, identical, by the end of Wednesday.
No deposit needed.

The fork is super-heavy, old tech, "hi ten" mild steel. It's stiffer than hell, yet,
I'm going to make it stiffer yet. This is my Model T technique for wiggly tie rods:
I'm going to fill that fork with semi-hard epoxy, through its water-drain (RUST MAKER) holes,
and have a composite fork that I could soak in the Bay for a week with no rust, no trouble fifty years from now.

This is to be a bike to outlast me by decades.
A fork need not be flexible. A TIRE needs to be flexible; that's your shock absorber.
And tell me, front suspension enthusiasts who load their flimsy telescoping forks with ten or twenty pounds of hub motor,
is such a fork up to the task, long term? Will it ever wear, grow a bit wobbly?
My bike, I just betcha, Mister, can and will coast down the long, 4% grade Rickenbacker bridge at forty or more mph (just coasting because it's a 20 mph bike, and be as rock-stable as any motorcycle.

We shall see. I'm gonna paint the fork Rustoleum yellow with a brush (or maybe a can), bake it at 150F in the oven, two coats, and fit it to the motor axle, to the bike, and ride, sally, ride. And fear nothing but
a color clash until I brush paint the rest of the silver steel-painted frame.

This to-do is also going to spend a night at the bottom of my neighbor's swimming pool, and then be run,
proving its components are all short-proof. And none of the bearings, from hub to headstock, will suffer the least from water, nor will the tubing take on water to rust it from the inside out.

A good bike should be as weather-lasting as the finest cars, salted roads or not.
Our roads are not salted, at least.

Old Yeller with Plans,
Reid (or Rid of, if he takes another header)

[northernmike]

This might work out better for you, sir!





If you're only going to run 10psi in your tires, why not use tires designed for it?

I respectfully maintain, however, that filling a flexible, elastic, steel tube fork with hard, brittle, heavy epoxy resin is a compromise at best!

[Reid Welch]

This might work out better for you, sir!





If you're only going to run 10psi in your tires, why not use tires designed for it?

I respectfully maintain, however, that filling a flexible, elastic, steel tube fork with hard, brittle, heavy epoxy resin is a compromise at best!

Harumph!

First: Only my mother calls me sir. Everyone else calls me "idiot fool".

Second: the Surly features knobby, noisy tires not needed for clean dry or wet pavement on which I run.
The Bontrager giant slicks are the coolest looking feature of this bike. People squeeze them. Do they squeeze your knobs, meant in the nice way?

Third: The Surly is super and its price reflects its build quality. Is is aluminum?
I want no aluminum frame. I want no wear-able parts.

Fourth: it has gears that I absolutely don't need, no fenders, which I do need for riding in the rain,
and...ride a dirt bike in the mud and have fun replacing alloy chainrings, chains, "sealed" bearings, etc.
My simple bike will never need a new ball bearing set, but if it did: fifty cents and a half hour and a pair of wrenches or wenches, if they are mechanical lesbians.

I go over double concrete curbs and stay =on the saddle=.

The ten PSI is perfect for this tire, which more usually is run at 25PSI or so;
in fact, if I installed a front brake, higher air pressure would be mandatory to prevent sidewall wrinkling on heavy braking.

The weight is not on the front of the bike. It is in "perfect" rear-biased balance;
it is positively stable, precise steering, and quiet and just about bullet proof.

Fourth: I expect a drive by shooting some day. This is Miami. When that happens,
erase what I said at the end of the prior paragraph?

Thank you for differing with my ways and modest means.
Discourse and disagreement lead to the best of friendships.

----
You play Little John. I'll be Robin Hood. I look good in tights on Friday nights out on the town. Green.


double click on the player and choose "HQ" if at all possible. Technicolor truth.

[Reid Welch]

GOOD OLD Coral Way Bike Shop (since 1942)

Man, it pays to patronize the LBS.
As you all know, several weeks ago I took a header, flying through the air.
The eZee wound-up its self, its wire lead-ins, in the steel dropouts, but the front wheel,
of course, it did not come off. Lawyer lips, tight nuts, all perfect. Yet, I shall fit a torque arm soon.

The top of the stem took a mighty bash; I =could= have re-used it;
hell, I could have re-used the spread-lip fork. I just won't do that.

From the LBS, that $200 chinese cruiser. Locally imported, distributed, SunKruiser.

Ordered a new fork three days ago.
Yesterday the fork arrived, but it was the wrong version: with lugs for caliper brakes.
Ray got on the phone with JB Importers. "SORRY".
"We'll have it tomorrow by five PM, the right fork."
"Alberto will pull and re-mount the headstock bearing ring---special puller and press tool".

Here it is. What's next? Tonight I fill the hollow steel (which is so strong, anyway),
with semi-hard bartop epoxy. This makes the fork much stronger yet, and I =could=
soak it for a month in the bay water: no internal rusting possible.

The drain holes you see are universal to all bikes.
All steel bikes are wet inside from wash and rain water.
They rust, invisibly, and some year, will fail at some unexpected time.
Not so, this bike.
Big pictures to come soon will show the epoxy step.
A stiff fork is the best fork, sorry dissenters, KWYADAWYADI?
I'm such a blowhard, sheesh!

-----
back at the bike shop a half hour ago, this scene:
The customer ahead of me had in hand a broken, nearly new, seat post.
What's it made of? Carbon fiber shite! Carbon fiber fatigues and breaks with NO warning.
Lucky him, it was only a seat post and not a stem or frame or fork.

Steel, mild, old, alloy steel for me. No Reynolds tubing; no brittle, fatigue-possible cro-moly.

Cheap, strong, parts available, I will now epoxy fill and tomorrow or the next day,
paint it with the most beautiful yellow oil paint, by brush;;;it will look sprayed-on.
And you will soon see a safety yellow bike. The yellow I ended up getting is Benjamin Moore Impervo,
because nobody locally carries Rustoleum in safety yellow. I got the color custom: of five or seven shades of yellow, I got the brightest, purest yellow: the same yellow as seen on Chevy products like...
Hummers.

Excited to soon be in the saddle again,
and re-viewing the Robin Hood clip again.
My staff (fork) shall not fail me again, forsooth!

Reid

[nutsandvolts]

Second: the Surly features knobby, noisy tires not needed for clean dry or wet pavement on which I run.

The Pugsley is just a frame built for wide wheels. It can be setup in many different ways. The gears shown in the pic are just an example of one possible build. One of the interesting things about this frame is that the front wheel dropouts are the same width as the rear, making front and rear wheels interchangeable. For electric then, it could have two rear wheel motors ... kind of an interesting flexibility ...

What's up with that fork? It's spaced to 135mm and offset 17.5mm…like the frame dropouts. The fork accommodates a rear hub (our rear mountain hubs work well as front Pugsley hubs). This accomplishes two things; It allows a wide tire to fit through the dropouts without a struggle, and it allows you to interchange the front and rear wheels. Why would you want to swap wheels? 1) Single-speeders can change their gear ratios on the trail by swapping wheels. 2) You may want a fixed cog option in case your freewheel freezes up in the middle of nowhere. A properly installed fixed cog will drive the wheel regardless of the temperature, and it can help you slow down if your brakes stop working. Regarding brakes…front disc users will need to use a rear-specific caliper on the Pug fork (or front caliper with rear caliper adapter mount). The axle-to-crown height of the Pugsley fork is the same as that of our Instigator fork. So, if you choose not to use the Pug fork, you can install a suspension fork or an Instigator fork on your rig without altering its geometry.

Surly Pugsley

The frame is CroMoly steel. Surly doesn't even make a complete Pugsley bike, just the frame and they do have wheels and tires for it, but the rest is up to your imagination.

[Reid Welch]

Oh, man, but that Pugsley looks GREAT. However, I'm into this particular bike.
If I ever make another....well, not likely that I will.

Finally getting to work on the new fork.
The images are fairly self-explanatory.

FIRST: plug the water drain holes at the bottom with five minute epoxy PUTTY,
and with a sharp blade, shave off the excess, then rough file, then,

I drill the dropouts for American NF screws: 1/4 x 28TPI. I just like that size, and easy to get those screws here in Miami.

Then under the outdoor faucet, SCRUB and de-oil the fork (I had only WD-40 for a a tapping oil).
Then 360 rubbing. Note the various colours? Blue was the factory's base filler-colour, then grey primer,
then silver, then clear coat. It looks like hell but is smooth as silk to the touch.

The fork is FILLED WITH NON-BRITTLE bartop-pour epoxy. Really not necessary;
but it does make the tapered ends of the fork ever so much stronger, and they are STRONG, even hollow.

See that in order to fill the fork with ten ounces of slow-setting bartop epoxy with a plastic syringe,
I found it necessary to make fill-holes atop the crown? Then I filled until the liquid got to that level
of the inside-the-headstock holes. And after the epoxy was cured about ten hours later,
plugged the inside holes and upper, crown-fill holes, with the putty epoxy.

This, to repeat again, is being done to make the bike submarine-safe: that I could leave it out of doors in pouring rains,
or drive through flooded streets we get here every other year or so, for stunts, for fun, for PROOF
that an ebike can go where NO other wheeled vehicle goes...and it won't slowly rust out from the inside.
This is the world's first truly submarine-capable-toss-it-in-the-pool ebike!

Next step: fixture the fork on a broomstick or some such way so I can handle it easily,
and give it a first coat of Impervo (USA Benjamin Moore old fashioned rust-inhibiting gloss yellow).

We'll see how it look with just one coat. I'll age the coat and probably wet sand with 600 grit wet paper
and put on a second coat, then install the fork to the bike, fit the axle to the dropouts just so,
and nut it all tight.

Note the standard "lawyer lips". Yet, this thing can and did wind-up in the old fork, no matter that it is steel:
it was THE CRASH that caused the original fork lips to spread open. TORQUE ARM any ebike.
God, I am a slow learner.

I'll fit a torque arm to the non-wire side before too long; that can be installed and brush painted later.
It's just a working bike, neatly-enough hand painted. Should be cake.



(having some photobucket difficulty....it processed only a few of my images.
stand by. be bored. it's good for your blood pressure to be bored. )





--
OK, now I know: make a totally new-name file folder for adding images to an existing topic.
Photobucket is great, they really are. I should be paying for their services, so vital to my com. needs.

the photos are not in chronological order...the Tide (the only soap I had on hand)
was the first step, AFTER epoxy-filling, drilling/tapping, to wash off the oil















Cheers, tomorrow we brush paint with the hake brush;
more images to come then,

yr. PITA eblogger: yellow belly reid


______________
Point and shoot Panasonic digicam,
highest quality Photobucket "size" (least compressed)
and one size larger than 640/480.
GET PICASA for free, easy photo editing: cropping, brightening, sharpening, etc.
It's great. I love Google. What a wonderful corporation!

[Zoot Katz]

. . . they are STRONG, even hollow. . .

Surely you know, that for its weight, bamboo is strong. That it and bicycle tubing are hollow is not a coincidence.
I think the fork legs will perform like tubing regardless of the epoxy fill considering the disparate properties of the materials.

PS: The weep hole in the tubes is there to let the heated gases escape during welding.

[Reid Welch]

THREAD LINK ONLY. NOT FOR DISCUSSION HERE.
GO TO:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10718&start=0

For historical/documentation purposes only, is this link applied here and now.



This is to be a world-famous ebike, if I but live for a few more months.
The pale print of page one explains all.

[Reid Welch]

Pre-PS: before you even wade through this BS, know it is NOTHING to strip a plain bike frame to its bare frame.
But that's not my option here because I pullled the MANY wires from the controller and C.A. through the big, curving up-tube of the frame. Those wires are basically there to stay: I can cut and splice, but no way am I gonna ever pull them all out to remove either the controller nor the front wheel from the harness: I'd wire-snip first It was difficult for this noob to do away with all the eZee FUGLY quick-disconnects and their three extra feet of wire. I cut the cables, hard wired, soft soldered, sealed, pulled and made it impossible to easily take the bike down to the bare frame for an easy, quick, perfect spray paint job.
That is why I am brush painting the essentially-assembled bike. Look ma: no house stink, no overspray, no.. just a brush and a bottle of yellow oil paint.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

OK. Pictures tell all. That's the special, soft brush.
Get the crap on quick, quick, quick, then "tip it off", catching runs
and bubbles, streaks, as you can. This is only a first coat.
Do not go back to fix tiny problems ten minutes later; only if you find a big drip or run;
the brush mark will be yucko.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that alkyd enamel is not like the fine color varnishes of the past:it does not lay out like even greasy glass
unless you thin it with a bit of mineral spirits (white spirit) or xylol, and spray. Even then it won't have the "wet look" of catalyzed polyurethanes, etc.
BUT WE ARE NOT going to spray this bike frame: it is not to be torn down just to spray-can-paint the frame.

BECAUSE alkyd is without "oil", it contains no internal slip when wet, not to speak of, no better lay-out, nearly, than latex house paint, sure,
but sheeeeesh, this stuff is as terrible-brushing as I recall from years ago!
It does not seem much likely to self level.
It will look a lot better when dry and then second-coated. But nothing like I used to get from spray or
japan varnish. A coarse brush would make an even worse result. : There are, at West Marine (USA),
boat enamels that brush out pretty well: modified alkyds, silconized to give them some ability to self-level.
But not so with this sort of paint: and I needed a particular yellow anyway. And yellow is not a great pigment for brushing;
black is the easiest paint to brush smooth because it contains such a low solids content; it flows best.

First coat, then age it, then wet sand and a second coat:
and whatever it turns out to be: so be it. If I wanted a super level, shine,
I could've elected to strip the bike to bits and spray it with acrylic enamel from the auto parts store.
Duplicolor (USA) spray can brand, auto parts stores, lays out very nice,
but NOT IN THIS WEATHER: it is too hot and too humid to spray can paint; it will orange peel and blush.

Quality spray enamels, lacquers and "epoxy" (they are not true epoxies) in spray cans give GORGEOUS
results if and when you prep and then spray in a cool, DRY, clean environment. I can't do that now.

Guys, this is summer in Miami. It is too hot and humid for good spray results outside of an air conditioned pro or home-made booth.
Only pro polyurethanes with retarder (anti blush), or spray gun acrylic lacquer with "hardener" and retarder; can't use ANY brand of spray can paint in this weather, and I'm not about to buy a spray gun again
and futz with all that work of cleaning the gun and this and that, filtering the compressed air, etc.
Not for a single bike paint job like this; what a mess of extra work a pretty paint job would be
for a bike I crash weekly.

From ten feet away it should look like 500 dollars. Huzzah! From one foot away: I think I may have a fifty cent-looking paint job. So be it. We shall see. I hope all viewers have bad eyesight.

I'm just fumbling along, but oh, how I miss what I used to get from my home-made japan black varnish:
black mirror, absolutely perfect, exactly like black mirror, no exaggeration.






_________

I am so damned egotistical, but as we used to say about Clara Rockmore, I knew her, Google her,
telling it like it is is no great sin when you are simply telling the truth.


double click on the player and "HQ" playback it if at all possible.
This is a highly specialist video of no general interest.
I may put it in the paint thread, just to ensure that people know what a brush can do
if you KWYADAWYADI. I made this varnish, black, myself: the only living human on the face of this earth who knows japan black this well. All the old guys who made and applied this stuff are long dead,
and they did NOT write down their trade secrets, not as a rule. I am the only living person with actual experience with
this amazing, old time varnish (for it is not actually paint), which was the standard finish for early bike frames,
and so many metal goods: dip, drain, dry, bake, repeat: you had a glass hard, tough, flexible wonderful black,
blacker than ANY paint made to-day. I use old spellings because I'm eccentric. I also lack mental
co-ordination now. Tired out.
_________________

edit #1. there are typos to be corrected, various small defects. But I am so tired, so tired.
It's an interesting fact that brain work is more fatiguing to the human body than physical labour.
Now, given that over-exertion affects me in an SLE way: I wear out in an hour. I cannot leave the home for more than an hour at a time;
I have to lay down and nap. I'll fix this yakkedy-yak-yak post eventually; just not now.
Time now, vitally needed, for zoning out entirely.

edit number two, I just woke up from a nap. the paint, thank Benjamin Moore and damp weather, is still wet to the touch four hours later. (I touch the bottom of the crown tube, an unseen area, to test).

What this means: the paint has been so slow to "set" that it HAS INDEED leveled out, quite well enough, so far as my artificial light can tell. I will know more tomorrow in the bright sun, when I can really see,
but so far, as it is, just one coat (two WILL be needed), it looks very, very good for brush work.
It will all turn out OK after all. It won't look like a kiddie-with-house-paint job after all. It won't look like a
milllion dollar bike, either, but I don't want that, not at all. I just want a safety yellow, that I WILL be seen from afar by soccer (football in yourope) mommies, oblivious and distracted, in Hummer H2s.

[Reid Welch]

Any air-curing paint is vastly speeded-up to full cure by high temperature baking.
Japan black is, and MUST be baked at 350 to 400F for one hour between coats.

On the other hand, goopy 1930 alkyd oil paints cannot be baked above 200F without risking destroying the resin.

So we bake coat number one, after one day of air drying, in a low oven, at 175F, a safe temperature,
and bake until there is NO trace of "new paint" odour.

Then color sand and apply coat number two tomorrow.
This saves weeks and months of time: HEAT vastly speeds all chemical reactions,
and with paints such as this, proper, gentle, baking toughens them beyond what would be gained by six months at room temperature: 24 hours in the oven is equal to a half year at room temperature,
PLUS it polymerizes the film tougher than mere air cure (an oxidation process) can ever offer.

In the oven, coat number one: picture soon. It looks OK in bright daylight. Better than I'd expected.
picture to come into this form later.

cheers,
el bloggo, excited to watch paint dry

[Reid Welch]

First Coat after fourteen hours, low baked.
Mouse over the small image, to the upper left corner. Select "full size" and you can see all.
This is the ROUGH first coat, brushed as shown in the posting-pictures above.

Notes: the fresh paint odour is now practically gone.

=you know when it is ready to wet sand for the finish coat by this way:
TOUCH the hot paint. Does it feel like rubber, or does it feel glass-smooth?
If it is non-grippy to the touch: she is done, ready for a final wet sand with 600 grit paper,
and then the finish coat.

I am not well today. I think I will rub and brush on the final coat tomorrow.
Let air dry for one day, and the repeat the low-bake procedure, and install the fork to the bike.
150F to 200F; no hotter than 200F, please. At 250F, alkyd begins to decompose.
200F is perfectly safe and makes in ten hours, a more mature paint than one year of room temperature
or outdoor exposure. Heat is your friend, up to a point. Don't burn your paint.
Don't put a just-painted part right away into a HOT oven, or you will boil its solvents and bubble the finish. You CAN begin right away, but do initial bake of the hour-old paint at 120F for a few hours, then gradually raise the temperature. Use your horse sense. Don't whip me if you mess up?


This is a built-in deluxe oven of 1972 which features an integral exhaust fan, carrying all odours
out of the house via long, metal vent tubing. You can't do this normally in your wife's kitchen oven;
you will be murdered...and if solvents, evaporating, should build up to a particular point in a regular oven,
then when the heating element turns on (goes red). BOOM. So get a junk oven and put it in your workshop or under shed cover out of doors and make it a power-vented oven; you can fudge..just a little, by building into it, with stand-off tubing from the bottom, a tiny, tiny, blower fan...

Think. Go slow. What's your hurry? I only want to get this back on the road and ride and make videos
sufficient to leave behind a sort of legacy before I die.

Cheers.
Play me like I play this thread:

[Reid Welch]

Captions and what-and-why explanations will be added soon.
I have been so very ill. This super simple project has dragged on because I am
inventing as I go along, and I am an noob, and I made a great decision: NO SPRAY PAINT.

And to repaint a nearly fully assembled ebike (this should have been done to the brand new bike before electrifying it), is a total PITA, especially when the builder is fading out.

This is a race: finish this world's first submarine, actually AMPHIBIOUS ebike before I die.
Do you understand, this can possibly become the most famous bicycle in the world; YouTube, other mass media coverage, human interest story of the finished, working result. FUN.

Do you see too, that DOM will not only be toss-it-in a pool or drive through a waist-deep stream, but
by simple addition of home made "paddles" temp. affixed to the front wheel spokes, and with home-made, but nice-looking foam (you foam Great Stuff and then carve it and gel coat it and spray it whatever color stands it off from the bike) pontoon flotation,

I can certainly drive this bike down a boat-loading ramp, into fresh water and then go for a little very slow boating e-ride, and come out of the water, and speed off down the road,
just like an amphibious car. And without the least harm or failure to any of the steel or electrical parts.

This bike will, someday, I hope, be a museum piece:
the world's first submarine and also boat-bike, e or pedal powered...
...and to the casual viewer on a regular day: it will look like a NOTHING cruiser bike:
not the tempting sort of $$$$ road bikes so beloved by pro bike thieves.

Pictures to be captioned later, maybe tonight.




Like Garbo, I am tired, so tired (SLE, and now, heart disease).

The next step, perhaps tonight: drill TWO TINY HOLES, atop and at the bottom of the head tube,
for insertion of my already-proven "glue syringe", filled with heated, totally waterproof "Green Grease" (a brand name in the USA).
This will make the headstock bearing fully proof against water ingress. NO zerk fittings needed at all. Just two invisible injection holes,
one at each location of the headstock bearings. The hollow tube itself will be manually packed with the thick, pernicious green synthetic grease,
and on rare occasion, I can and will inject new grease into the bearing points to flush out water or dirt contaminated grease.
This will be a bike fully sound and strong as when new, even if it survives for one hundred years of rough use, which it should easily live,
and so, it is my little, worthless but exciting legacy bike.

It is named DOM for our forum member Dom Harvey of AU, who helped me at the very beginning of my little make-mountains-from-molehills, ebike avocation, back when our beloved Endless Fear was a brand new place.
You guys have been great to me, every one of you!

Thank you for your forbearance,
member number five, the tortoise who intends to terrapin,
Reid

[docnjoj]

Reid, "Long may you run".
otherDoc

[Reid Welch]

Reid, "Long may you run".
otherDoc

Thank you.

Lookie, I am not in any dire ill-health state, but, one never knows, do one?
I may be just fine ten years from now, or dead tomorrow, same as any other member here.
At least I'm not Michael Jackson, not yet or ever! I may dangle the "baby" (DOM) from a fouth floor balcony
and drop it into the hotel pool below, from forty feet. That ought to get the media's attention (jk).

This stupid-long thread is yet at the top again.
I will not raise it again until I have something substantial to show you all.

And if, by any malfunction of the human machine, that I cannot finish or long-use the bike:
I know where it's going: To Justin, or to a local youth named Tomas, a CVS employee who had TWO ebikes,
both stolen from his storage warehouse. He has ridden Dom and he loves the concept and handling and performance.
So, if and when the time comes, I may just give it to Tomas, and he will take care to preserve it from total loss.
Justin, if he wanted it for his e-bike museum, would have it for the cost of shipping the dratted thing to Canaduckia.

But I WILL get it finished. I'm going to put some major, hard miles on this bike.
And it WILL be famed on YouTube. Modus Vivandi: a reason for me to persist.
I won't let a little set back stop me from success. And since the bike is really, fully waterproof,
it should be entirely safe to run it in Biscayne bay (pontoons); the salt should not hurt it at all.
Treat it like an Amphicar of the 1960's...but ever so easier to keep it from corroding from the inside out.

It will be a time, that's for sure. The Yellow Submarine and Boat Ebike.
Where are The Beatles, now that I need them for a new version of a beloved song?

[bart_dood]

Gotta say this is the most confusing thread on any forum I've ever read....

[vanilla ice]

Dude, its the yellow submarine ebike, whats so confusing?

[Reid Welch]

^
Thank you, vanilla, thank you.

PEEPS, I WILL NOT RESPOND AGAIN NOR APPLY TO THIS THREAD UNTIL I HAVE SOMETHING NEW AND WORTHY TO SHARE.

At the moment, I am preoccupied with the Trek Lime manual bike-dissection thread (search Trek Lime).

Then, in due time, I apply coat three to the front fork (brushed fugly alkyd enamel paint.
Then, at that time, I put yellow to the headstock area.
Then, I repair the ripped-out wires (one or more is internally broken)

Then I finish waterproofing the bike, then finish painting the sucker, then....

YOU WILL SEE SOME AMAZING STUNTS, considering that I'm just an aging duffer.

LIKE: ride full speed into a very deep swimming pool (next door),
sink, right the bike, and power it out, electrically, to the shallow end,
lift the bike from the water and then race off into the sunset.

AND TOO: it will someday be an electric boat-bike (pontoons) and the front wheel spokes will have paddles:
slow, but from air, to land, to water and back to the land again (boat ramp, probably salt water.

NO more applications to this thread, please, until I have something to show: a partly-painted, working ebike.
It will be all-yellow when finally done,

and all underwater/in water/ on the road / boating / and also taking air (leaps, hard) in due time.
There is no rush when fumbling along in the dark, or you (me) may failbread

Thanks, V. You done good for me.

r.

[liveforphysics]

I just thought of an alternate idea for making a waterproof bike.

In the course of building some custom aquarium pumps for my saltwater reef tanks, I needed strong pump bearings that could live in a saltwater foam mix, and never leach Iron from rusting. Surgical stainless steel bearings last fairly well when continously submerged, but in a foam, they turn into a rusty crud pile in about 2 months. This puts the lives of my corals in danger.

So, I found bearings and shafts completely impervious to running in a salty foam mixture 24-7. Full ceramic bearings and Titanium shafts. And get this, the ceramic bearings list right on the spec sheets, to NOT lubricate! They have a beautiful non-contact double wall interference shield, and don't want lube.

From my thinking, you could pick up an old used Lightspeed Ti frame and rigid fork somewhere, and order full ceramic bearings for wheels, bottom bracket, and head-tube. Then rather than trying to seal the bike to keep water out, you could let the water freely pass through all points on your bike as it pleases. You could leave it in saltwater or an acid bath for 50 years, pull it out, and have a bike that works like new still.

Just an idea.

Best Wishes,
-Luke