How to build a Klunker Bike

[Music] okay we've got our shop we got a stand we got a project waiting to be built let's do this [Music] for those of you who've never heard of a clunker before in the 1970s and 80s the godfathers of mountain biking gary fisher joe breeze tom ritchie and many others began a crazy cycling alternative that would become mountain biking as we know it today essentially if you had an old single speed coaster brake frame you could modify existing parts into a laid-back cruiser designed to descend on the hills quickly it was a far cry from modern day full suspension mountain bikes but still a very laid back retro style that caught on quickly for my 2020 version of a clunker i want to take the same style of bike they had in this case a 1940s western flyer cruiser and bring it up to speed at least 20 or 30 years in technology luckily i had a good friend who had two bicycles that were basically destroyed and he allowed me to take as many parts as i wanted to to convert this to at least a early 2000s mountain bike i hope you enjoy [Music] so [Music] whenever you work on an old frame you run the chance of bent tubes or ovalized openings in the case of an old balloon tired bike they use the seat post that was under one inch in size the smallest modern seat post you can buy is around 22.2 millimeters or basically a bmx seat post so while the fitting was close i wanted to make sure it was smooth enough to go up and down without getting stuck in the future so using a ball reamer i ran this up and down about 10 minutes to try and shave off not just the paint but enough metal to make it smooth [Music] okay so this was an unusual problem to tackle the original head tube on this 1940s western flyer was somewhere between inch and 8 inside diameter and one inch since the fork i wanted to use in here was inch and an eighth i realized i would have to have these machined down or have the head tube reamed out since the cups themselves are made of soft aluminum that seem to be the way to go the outside diameter of the head cups was measured around 34 millimeters when it's tapered where it needed to go down to was around 32.7 millimeters so working with local machine shop they were able to machine this down pretty quick they kept the taper in the cups which made it easier for me to press into the frame and still have a good enough bite challenge number three how do you put disc brakes on an old frame that was never designed for it as you can see here i have a still 74 millimeter iso brake tab that typically would be flush mounted on the top of the triangle luckily after placing the caliper on the rotor and rotating it forward it lined up just great on the outside edge of the frame the idea was if there was enough purchase to the metal it would hold whether or not the stress of it will cause any damage to the frame we'll find out [Music] [Music] so i am a big fan of powder coating steel frames especially when you've got small amounts of pitting there's nothing like having a thick coating that is able to not only make something look beautiful but actually adds a layer of protection which is much more durable than paint now hats off to old shovel and people that do incredible hand-painted jobs i'm in awe of your work and i think it's wonderful but for an old steel frame that's 70 years old this was definitely the way to go if you have a frame that has definite oxidation happening inside the frame there's a great product called frame saver that i'll link down below for older frames that you're worried about resting from the inside out it's a coating in a small aerosol can used to spray the inside of the tubes it's a little messy to work with but definitely worth it if you're trying to preserve an old frame [Music] [Music] all right this was probably my favorite part of the conversion of this bike like a lot of single speed bicycles of that era you have either a 68 millimeter bottom bracket with a standard american opening just like a bmx bike so for around fifteen dollars you can buy an adapter which is a set of cups that are pressed inside the tube this allows it to adapt it down to a threaded english bottom bracket what used to be the old standard in the 90s the cool thing about this is that because the bottom bracket was only 68 millimeters wide i was able to use external bearings and have it work just fine with the shaft of the crank set here you can see i was having some difficulty lining up the holes on one side of the bottom bracket you simply press it in the other side you line up three long bolts and essentially suck it up to the other side of the cups this is needed because the rotational force of spinning the crank arms could cause these adapter cups to slide and move forward so by having the adapters threaded together it keeps either cup from slipping so so over the years i've grown to really appreciate a good set of torque wrenches it used to be when you started off in a bike shop that it was all down to a feel basically you'd pull until something broke cracked or it wasn't tight enough luckily around the turn of the early 2000s the need for torque wrenches was so high with carbon fiber frames that most bike shops quickly began to adapt [Music] so here i'm installing a 10 year old crank set with external bearings spacing is always kind of an issue when you're doing a conversion like this because you need to have a good chain line meaning that the chain should line up directly down the middle of the cassette and the chainring up front because i wanted to make this a single speed or 1x9 drivetrain it was a mix of old and brand new parts so here we have a single speed chain ring up front bolted with a four bolt pattern 32 chainring [Music] back in college i worked in a bike shop in southeast idaho and had a great time learning from some real pro mechanics i remember their endless conversations about how to pack bearings with one bearing less to get additional speed or what types of grease work better in cold weather they always had interesting little bits of history from the 70s and 80s that allowed us to do repairs in the 90s that i wouldn't have known about even today there's still quite a bit of engineering and retrofitting that's needed to make old things work for about 10 years when i began my career as a teacher i ran a side bicycle repair business where i would travel around with the van doing repairs on the sides of the road on military bases and at mountain bike races and road bike tours across the mountain west i love the mental break it gave me teaching off times is a lot of stress and to have something you do with your hands and to feel like you can kind of turn your brain off for a minute and just focus on something that is coming together is kind of a peaceful thing [Music] it's been a few years since i pulled out the tools to do anything big like this most of the time it's just been small maintenance on a mountain bike or fixing a flat tire for my kids [Music] so one of the unknowns of this project was figuring out what the head tube angle was really going to translate to older forks already had a built-in setback so the rake was either very relaxed or very straight up and down so the more relaxed the headtube angle is can make a better downhill bike if it's too raked out though it'll feel a little squirrely and make it very hard to steer so one of the things i actually did before we had this all painted up and done for this video was i actually pre-built the wheels and the fork so that i could take it out for a spin and make sure that this was actually going to work the other weird thing we did was we happened to have an old u-turn rock shock which allowed it to change from 85 millimeters of travel to 120. this was very helpful in deciding what the appropriate travel should be for this bike [Music] so here is one of the most interesting fixes for this bike project that i thought would be the most stressful but really was the easiest when you have a frame that does not have a derailleur hanger bolt attachment you have to figure out another way of getting it on there that comes down far enough to actually engage the chain and have clearance for the cassette so what i used was a emergency derailleur hanger these are about 15 bucks at most bike shops and are designed so that if you get stuck on a trail and your hanger gets busted off you can quickly clamp the derailleur on the hanger between your quick release axle but since we want this thing to last for a long time and have some good purchase to the frame i used a locking quick release axle this actually works really well at holding the derailleur in the correct position and i'm not worried about it slipping [Music] so just a word about running a drivetrain on this old frame since there were no cable guides and i was trying to run my shifter clear back to the derailleur i came across some really inexpensive cable guides that have 3m tape on the back of it since the frame is powder coated i'm not too worried about getting it off but these do seem to be holding up pretty well [Music] this older sram x9 drivetrain works really well but tops out around 32 or 34 teeth on the back at some point i'm sure i'll be putting on a 1x9 with a much bigger gear ratio [Music] [Music] so i'm sure what everyone wants to know is how does this thing ride well it actually climbs surprisingly well out of the saddle or sitting down i was surprised i felt almost as confident as any other hardtail i've ever ridden before descending is nice but i do miss having a little bit more travel i originally set it for 85 millimeters and then switched it to 100 millimeters of travel so is it like a full suspension bike no but with some wider bars 2.3 inch tires it's a confident little climber i like [Music] it [Music] you

Channel: Cool Bike Projects

Views: 62,029

Rating: 4.9081745 out of 5

Keywords: 1940's cruiser, balloon bike, bicycle repair, bicycle restoration, bike restoration, clunkers, cool bike projects, custom bicycle, custom bike build, dream bike build, how to bicycle mechanics, how to build, how to powder coat a bike, how to restore a bicycle, klunker, klunker bike, klunkers, modified mountain bike, mountain bike restoration, old bicycle, powder coating a bicycle, rat rod, restoration, vintage bike restoration, vintage bikes, vintage cycles, western flyer

Id: pq0qwQOC2Jg

Length: 17min 53sec (1073 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020