Final Groovy Series race and some Ti bending fun

Sunday dawned cool yet absolutely beautiful for what was to be the longest rain delay race of the season...the original final race was to be the day the wind storm hit and most of the area was without power for as much as 9 days; good decision to postpone Kevin ;)

We had an excellent time. I brought a bunch of frame materials and some in progress work to let everyone see just what is going on beneath all that paint and powder. I was able to chat with a lot of folks and really enjoyed being out there with like minded souls.

The registration area prior to the race participants arriving...all set up and ready to press some flesh.

At the awards ceremony, we drew for the final series winners. Each participant received points for their finishing positions as well as additional entries for each race they attended of the six. Roger Sommers was the lucky winner of the custom frame, bar, and fork. I'll be fabbing this one up to have for NAHBS '09...maybe Roger will come out to Indy to see his frame kit under the big top ;)

And the Luv Handle goes to...Jeff Pendleberry!
Mark Jones was the lucky recipient of a custom painted dropout bottle opener...a nice compliment to our beer sponsor, Sierra Nevada Brewery.
and a few special tee's went out to Jeff Pendleberry (won twice the lucky bastard!), John Lorson, and Big John...my prize girls lingering on the right :)
Monday I began creating a custom fixture for bending up Erics rack, hope to have that done tonight and ready to begin massaging some tubing.

I also got to work on fabricating some Ti straight bars.

I began by running a center line down the tube, parting off the Ti to the requested length, chamfering the internal and external faces of the ends, then marking the center and the bend axis points.

After some careful bending, using not only an external die but also an internal mandrel to insure the tubing maintains it's shape, the bar gets placed on the alignment table to check for accuracy. Obviously, the pics are just representations of the process, as it is too difficult to exam the work while trying to take a pic yourself...

Angle of the dangle...I mean bend.

After checking to insure the angle is correct, the bar is stood on it's end points and measured from the apex of the bend to the table and then along the center section. An exact measurement means that both bends are equal and placed appropriately.

The bar then gets surface checked on both aspects to insure that it lays flat and square, an indication that the bar fabrication took place in one plane only

The finished product after Scothbrighting and clean up...

While I had the schwerve on, I took care of Eric and Mel's bar, one in 4 degrees, one in 6.

To round out the day, I put my nose to the grindstone and knocked out some more Luv parts...centers and grips, steel on the left, Ti on the right...

I'm gonna try to get the mounting Email tonight, so I'll be talking to ya soon,

rody