Thursday, March 27, 2008

Been pretty busy of late...

Hey folks, things have been crazy here lately.

Good news for me and those waiting on paint...the new booth is finally DONE, fini, complete!

I'll put it to work this week :)

Here's a shot of the inside...got each light glassed and sealed with a rubber stripping to keep the volatiles out of the electrical works, a rated filter wall for drawing out the nasties, and a ceiling mounted stand that allows me to rotate the frame 360 degrees in the vertical plane to insure full coverage.

While I was making a mess, I built up a new bake box for flash curing the paint. It can accommodate two frames at a time, lots of forks, and as many bars as I care to stuff in there.

The frames are secured in position by placing the headtubes over the fixed mounts at the far end, allowing an externally touch free support with full moving hot air coverage. The bars are for hanging forks off of and can be removed at any time. The whole shebang is run with a hot air circulator that can bring the temp up to 400 degrees. Mmmmm, can you smell what I'm baking?
Next up are some shots of the antique rootbeer build that I documented in the powder coat process.
I built up some sweet White Industries ENO wheels for this; yep, I do wheel builds too, been doing them for 20 years now so if you have a special need for some custom hoops, let me know :) .
I wanted to keep this build somewhat classic and understated, so the frame is adorned with just polished silver components and honey brown leather, yum.
This will be a shop demo or if someone can't live without it, I'll move it on ;)






Next up is the prototype Hot Rods by Bill Grove. These are the cranks that are finally moving on to Holland for Roy's polka dot bike. Sooo glad to have this last piece of the puzzle so I can get that bike outta here! Not that I don't love it Roy, but it's been eating me up as much as you to get this thing home and in the dirt.
The cranks were the first two piece design, created in 1978 while Bill was running Titron components. Yes, that's right, these pre-dated Roger Durhams's Bullseye cranks...we've got reports of him checking them out a local races long before his parts came to fruition.
The cranks use a unique tri-coidal polygon spindle which allows 360 degree surface contact, making it the strongest spindle interface possible. This is the same design used on military tank drive shaft systems. They will spin off of external bearings or the new BB30 standard.
The cranks are uber light, though final numbers are being withheld until the design is concrete.
The final design is being flushed out now and should be ready for production in July. The cranks can be utilized in any ring combination with a proprietary spider and custom one speed rings will be fabbed by White Industries for us. Custom lengths upon request.
When they are totally ready, I'll help Bill let the world know, I know I'm jonesing for a set.

Well, I'm off. I've got 3 frames to build in the next four days, so posting may be a bit slim but I'll try to get some build shots up for y'all as well as a rough schedule of when projects are timed for.
cheers,
rody

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, that's a sweet rig!
and those cranks are just rad!
what's next, maybe a seatpost?

rody, your blog is gettin' one of my faves for bike porn... :D
i think someday, when i can afford it, you'll have to build a bicycle for me.

skøl, martn.

Sabrosa Cycles said...

sign me up for a set of those cranks! hot damn. they are gorgeous.
-jruss

Rody said...

Martn,

Thanks for the kind words. I do have a Ti seatpost fabbed up, just working out the kinks for the CNC bits :)

Jruss,

when they are available, I'll be putting the info up here. I'll try to snap a pic of the latest Trials version...they are killer!

cheers,

rody

Anonymous said...

Please put me on the info list re: the cranks. i am an avid bullseye fan, but getting a set is hard to do anymore. i love the look and engineering on those. i need cranks now too - by chance. so please any info on availablity will help, though i'm not sure if i will be able to make the wait. thanks.

ben hurl Ohuirthile@sbcglobal.net