Great success and great failure

Well,  raceday was yesterday. I managed to get the bike in reasonable condition by Friday night. Although far from perfect and really untried, I decided to give the "Storm the Trent" elite category race a try. I knew this was pushing the limits of an untested, homemade bike. The first event was the 11 Km kayak, I did reasonably well in that leg, finishing around the middle of the pack. I then transitioned to the first biking leg which started with a fairly long road leg through two checkpoints. After about four hours of racing and two hours of biking, the course started to be offroad on some ATV trails and power cutlines. Things were going relatively well until I started applying more force to the handlebars while working on the hills and the rougher terrain. While heading out from one of the checkpoints I pulled on the bars as I was accelerating and heard a loud crack from the front end. I immediately knew that I had cracked the modified headset that I had rebuilt with epoxy, aluminum, fibreglass and CF. I hoped there was enough strength left to get me to a road as at that time I was a fairly long way in the bush with just trails leading to roads. Luck wasn't on my side as a few hundred metres later the steering mast came right off. At that time I was about 5 hours into the race.

The fibreglass that released from the aluminum

The aluminum that wasn't prepared with etching acid before applying the epoxy. All my other aluminum/epoxy joints were prepped with West System etching....so far so good.

Now the fun really began as I had to figure out how I was going to get "Mad Max" out of the woods with no way to steer the front tire other than hunching over and steering by the remaining knuckle at the top of the fork tube.....this worked for a few hundred metres before I decided I would need to carry the bike on my shoulders. I had around 2-3 Km to go out, once the bike was up on my shoulders it wasn't too bad, although climbing some of the sandy hills was a bit of work, it wasn't as hard as Melissa was working as she had carried on with the race and eventually completed in just over 9 hours, winning first place in her division. She is an awesome athlete!!! It took about an hour to make it out to the road where I met up with another rider who had just lost his teammate to an injury. Watching the ambulance pull away made my broken steerer seem quite minor. We waited in the rain for about an hour until we got rescued by one of the racer recovery trucks. Overall the race was an excellent experience for me, I learned lots about race preparations as well as about my bike, which I am happy to say worked quite well. Overall, I am extremely proud of my accomplishment so far. I am sure the bike will never by finished, so I will continue with modifications and always make it better.

Mad Max as I her carried out of the woods. Spare bungy cords kept the loose
steering mast from flopping around.

So I am back to the drawing board with my steering. I am going to temporarily rebuild this piece so I can at least ride to work on the roads a couple of days a week, but will need to get a proper piece from Terracycle. My friend Richard is now using the Terracycle glide on his bike and it seems to be working quite well. He was the winner of our division at the race yesterday. Congratulations Richard!!!

The modified part before the race

Reworked Rear Suspension=SUCCESS

Last night I was depressed with the sag in my rear shock. It was causing problems with bottoming out the shock, chain management issues and poor gear shifting. Tonight I decided to move the rear shock mounts from underneath the swing arm to the top of the swing arm. My hope was to raise the back of the bike and create some more clearance so I wouldn't bottom out the shock. What happened was the angle of the shock changed from almost straight up and down to a lower angle. The shock works perfectly now. Obviously these shocks are designed to work on an angle instead of straight up and down. Another lesson learned!

The seat is quite a bit higher now, but it feels really good and the shock works as it should. I have a lot more confidence now that I will make it through the ride portion of the race with the bike working as it is now.

I do need to add some epoxy and CF to the bottom bracket, it isn't strong enough yet. I will work on that tomorrow night. Things are on track for Saturday, with no spare time for any more problems.....I know they are coming anyway!!

Oh yeah, I think the name of this monster will be "Mad Max". I am thinking I should mount a machine gun on the front!

Finished???

I am nearly finished. The last several weeks have been extremely busy with selling the house, going to Florida to find a new place to live and visit the kids' new schools. I have been trying to balance construction time with getting fit enough to race......oh yeah, the race is six days away!!!

The good news is that I finally got the bike out onto some trails today. It rides alright, but I have some tweaking to do this week as well as a bit more epoxy work for the bottom bracket.

I have major rear suspension sag problems right now, it is causing me to bottom out constantly and is causing havoc with my chain management. I will recheck the air pressure in the shock tomorrow and work on some adjustments. The lockout lever is due to be delivered tomorrow. Once I have that installed I should have good control over stiffening up the rear end. I hope so anyway, as it is not good the way it is now. If all goes as planned with that tomorrow night I will get the epoxy finished Tuesday night and then tweak the derailleurs Wednesday. Time is tight, but things will work out.

Oh yeah, I will be trimming the end of the steering mast as well, that piece sticking down by the front tire is just waiting to ensure I have the length right.

WOW, that thing is HUGE!!!

Well, what can I say? I own a big bike!! In this photo the seat isn't attached and the bottom bracket is just sitting inside the frame unbonded. Let me tell you, it felt great to put my full weight on the bike and hear no creaks or anything that sounds like a failure. I do need to add some air to the rear shock, it seems like there is very little pressure right now. Once I get it tuned properly there should be more of a downward angle to the swing arm. The rear shock has a lockout option which will allow me to lock it out with a lever on the handlebar. This is for climbing hills and times when you don't need the suspension and is supposed to help with losing power from you pedal stroke going into compressing the shock.

The long piece sticking out from the steering stem will be cut off once I know the correct length. I am going to try to make that piece of 1" aluminum into my handlebar. I have access to some pretty handy electricians at work and I am going to try to get them to bend the tube with a conduit bender. They made a great ergonomic kayak trainer paddle me earlier in the year, so I am hoping they can make me a custom curved handlebar. Once again, I can't do that until I am sitting properly on the bike with the mast adjusted right. I will most likely start with a straight bar and modify it once I have a few miles under my belt.

I bought two bike chains yesterday, my measurements show that I am going to be close to getting by with two, but I have a feeling I am going to need a few inches from a third bike......more parts for the next project!!!

Seat Update

Things continue to go well and now that the house is sold I can put most of my spare time towards the bike. The seat is coming along very well. As I mentioned earlier, I couldn't come up with a good way to mould the lumbar and horn. I decided to make things straightish and then add support once the seat is useable.

This weekend I got the seat base and the back ribs bonded and I layed the carbon on tonight, but I won't be putting on the epoxy on until tomorrow night as I ran out of brushes. A stop into the dollar store on the way home from work tomorrow will stock up my brush supply for the final few lay ups.

Busy Two Weeks

Progress has slowed down a bit, as we have put the house up for sale. To get it ready I had to spend a bit more time doing house stuff, instead of bike stuff. It all paid off, as we had an offer on the fifth day. As long as I get my posting message, the house is sold!! Now back to the bike.

The seat has taken shape really well, I thought I had some photos but I don't. Photos will come tomorrow as it is in the curing stage again tonight. The back frames got epoxied on this evening. The seat is a bit rough, but I think I got a pretty decent shape considering the rudimentary process I followed to make the thing.

If you can recall back to the small bottle cap filled with epoxy to hold the nut that will be the attachment point for the idler, this photo shows the piece CF'ed into the frame. I used some regular epoxy and some thickened with filler. The position is good and it feels very sturdy.

I have the new seat mounts built and installed. They are pretty good and very sturdy. I needed to use some scrap pieces of oak hardwood flooring. It added some chunkiness and alot of weight. but I didn't feel the pieces that I had were strong enough for the shock and the seat. The beefed up ones are definitely strong enough.

The rear shock mount at the swing arm is really ugly, in fact the entire swing arm is ugly. It looks to be functional, but I think I may be in for some cutting as it is starting to look like the shock housing is going to hit the arm when I hit a good size bump. I am going to give it a try for now. The most important part I want to happen in the next week is to ride it on the streets. From there I will fine tune to suspension issues.

The adventure continues......

Seat Action!!!

The frame and balsa (I swapped the insulation spacer for a larger piece)

Progress continues and the deadlines keep coming. We have decided it is time to put the house up for sale in anticipation of our posting message which should have already arrived and will hopefully be here anyday. With the house up for sale my "workshop" is going to have to be put away everyday. A hassle and a time consumer, but necessary to sell the house.

I have struggled significantly to come up with a good seat design that is both comfortable and buildable by a fabricator (hacker) of my caliber. This hasn't been easy and I have decided that the first version won't likely be comfortable but that I will hopefully be able to modify or add on to give it some curves to fit my cheeks and lumbar once I try it out. Once again, this is just theory. I know a good seat needs to have a "horn" in the centre of the seat area and some other shape to hold you in place.  I have also learned that it is very difficult to create that shape without some sort of 3d modelling clay or something along those lines. My theory is to add some foam once I am sitting on the seat. I will hopefully be able to carve and shape the foam to a decent form and then cover it with a layer of CF to create a masterpiece seat.

The balsa laying on the frames and posterboard

The parts, pretty flimsy by themselves

Profile of the seat.

Seat with 2 layers of CF, pink peel ply and custom clamp system (rice and flower in ziploc)

All this being said, the seat is another product of my own creativity. I couldn't find any info on how to build a seat similar to what I had in mind so I created my own concept. I already had the seat frames built from quite a few weeks ago. The plan was to lay balsa strips across the frames and then lay the CF sheet over the balsa. Cover the whole thing in a nice layer of CF and repeat. In order to keep the balsa flat I needed to add in a piece of poster board between the balsa and the frames. It all went as planned and this evening I just finished laying on the two layers of CF. So far so good.

Progress over the last week or so....

steering stem the black stripe is CF over thickened epoxy

Things continue to evolve, although I continue to hit "engineering challenges" at every corner. So far so good and I keep finding solutions that seem to work. I have the stem put together, if you recall from a few posts ago, it was cut in half so I could reattach it with a 90 degree turn in order to facilitate my steering mast. It is ugly, but it seems pretty strong. It is wrapped with fibreglass, then thickened epoxy followed by some CF ribbons wrapped around. I wrapped the entire package with the electrical tape to hold it nice and tight while it cured. So far so good, but I think some paint may be required or perhaps some finely wrapped CF ribbon to make it look a bit better. I have told myself all along that I'm not trying to build a beautiful bike, just one that is strong and that works. It is still some times frustrating to look at something that is really rough looking after looking at some of the beautiful sleek CF bikes that have been made. I guess you have to start somewhere! I will be happy if it goes off-road and does what I want.

I have put the bike into as complete a state as possible and had a "sit" on it to get a feel. I am very happy so far. Just to get an understanding of the size, the wheelbase is right around 6' so small she isn't. I have the necessary parts now to build my custom roof rack as soon as the bike is done.

The front end with the hole drilled for the bottom bracket

This week I drilled the hole for the bottom bracket and put a bit of CF inside to ensure I have a strong base to bond the BB to when I put it in. I made an attempt to put the BB in today but ran into problems trying to square it off in all three planes. This is my toughest engineering challenge so far and have decided that I need to wait until the seat is on so I can have a good location to measure distances from. Since nothing on the bike is square, it is really difficult to make one component perfectly square. Now I understand why diamond frame builders put the main components in a jig and then build the frame around them......maybe next time?

I have continued with work on the swing arm. This week I added some thickened epoxy to strengthen the joint between the arms and the shock mount. Today, I installed some aluminum angle pieces on the underside which will be the lower connection piece for the shock. I attempted to make some CF angles using the aluminum as a mold, but they just didn't seem strong enough and I didn't want to take more days building them up. The swing arm is looking pretty ugly and has managed to get a slight warp in it from the last session in the vacuum bag. I thought it was strong enough to resist the bag from causing a warp, but my estimate was wrong. This swing arm will do for now, but I think it is definitely V1.0 which will be near the top of the list of parts to rebuild.

Swing arm with aluminum shock mounts bonded

The frame hanging and wrapped with electician tape

Today I added the next layer of CF to the frame. I have been having a problem with this process getting annoying wrinkles in the vacuum bag. Since I only have this plus one more layer to go, I want to ensure things are starting to look at least partially smooth so the bike doesn't look like I used a stipple brush to apply the epoxy. I decided to use the electrical tape wrapped backwards technique that has been used by other homebuilders instead of the vacuum bag. I also applied the epoxy with the frame hanging instead of on the workbench. The hanging worked much better and the panic at the end was only moderate this time. The last few minutes of epoxy application have gone from chaos the first time, through to moderate panic this last time. I consider that a good learning curve!!

Starting to Resemble a Bike!!!

Starting to resemble a bike

swing arm rear view

It has been a very fruitful weekend with the bike. Now that the headtube and pivot are bonded on nicely, I was able to set the bike up much like it will look when it is completed in a week or two. This morning I carved the swing arm cross piece/lower shock mount. It got CF'ed and epoxied in between the rear stays during the same layup as the final tube of CF on the stays. Since I couldn't get the entire contraption into my vacuum bag and I wouldn't want stray epoxy getting sucked onto components such as the pivot or rear wheel, I decided to wrap the entire part with electrical tape. I have read about this technique from other builders who have made bikes. The theory is that the stretch of the electrical tape provides sufficient clamping pressure to hold the CF tight against the part. I am currently about 60 minutes into the curing and things look good so far. I used nylon in between the CF and tape on the area around the cross member because I need it ready for more CF to strengthen that area. In the lower (in pic) area I wrapped the tape directly onto the wet CF. This should give a smooth shiny appearance with little wet sanding. If it works, I may use this technique for my final layup on the frame.

Swing arm taking shape

I also mounted the front fork, tire, stem and steering mast to get and idea of dimensions for the mast and to have a look at how it look overall. The first word, which Richard can attest to, is LONG. Now that it is starting to look like a bike and the weather is very springlike I really have the urge to get riding.

Yesterday I bought a hole saw bit for the drill so I can drill out the hole for the bottom bracket. I will likely take the frame to work tomorrow and use the drill press to cut the hole. I will then be ready to CF the hole and bond in the BB. Once that is on I have a couple more lays of CF for the frame and it will be done. I will also be able to calculate how much chain, gear cable and brake line I will need. The LBS told me they can get that all in a couple of days.

swing arm with cross piece ready for CF

The biggest challenge ahead of me now is the seat. I have the base frames made. I now need to work on the balsa slats/cross pieces which will be covered in CF to make a smooth seat. I haven't been able to figure out how to create the carved shape for the bottom or a curve for the lumbar, so I am going to create a basic flat seat with straight back to start. Once I get on it I am planning on adding carved foam to create the shape I want and then covering that with one layer of CF......sounds good in theory!!

With electrical wrapped over layup

Bike in a jig

This lumber jig proved useless as the lumber wasn't square enough

The angle iron jig worked great!

More learning over the past two days. I haven't been able to find a significant amount of info regarding the best way to set up a recumbent bike in a jig to ensure it remains square in all planes while you epoxy on the various components such as the headtube, bottom bracket and in my case the swing arm pivot point. I started by using lumber and was hoping this would be square and sturdy enough. I struggled for the better part of two days to get everything straight. By lunchtime today I decided I would need to use something stronger and squarer than lumber. I decided angle iron should do the trick, so I went to Lowes and got 2 - 6' lengths of the largest angle iron they sell and built a jig for the

rear wheel to go in. This immediately made a huge difference and I quickly had things squared up. I used some 5 minute epoxy to "tack" the pivot axle on and held it in place for 20 minutes until it was sturdy enough to move. I then took it to the basement and applied a significant amount of epoxy thickened with 404 thickener to make a good bond and hold the axle in place. Over the next few days I will give it a few layers of CF to give it the necessary strength. The headtube installation is the next squaring challenge, that will happen tomorrow morning.

modified stem with fibreglass tube inside and fibreglass wrap on outside

Today I also made the modification to my stem. In order to create a steering mast the goes from the fork up to my handlebar which is about 24" away I need to have a stem that has both clamps in the same plane. They all come with the handlebar clamp 90 deg from the fork clamp. I also want my stem to have an adjustable angle so I can have a good variety of hand positions available. I bought an adjustable stem from MEC and cut it in half. I then built a small fibreglass tube to go inside the cut off piece to give it some strength when I bonded it back together. I didn't get a photo of the glass tube, but so far the installation has gone well. Fingers are crossed that this experiment will work. If not it will be back to the drawing board for  my steering solution.

stem and frame with pivot bonded on rear-end

pivot axle bonded on rear of frame

Early Bird gets the......epoxy

An early start today so I can try to get two batches through the vacuum in one day. I started around 5 and by 9 had the swing arms bonded to the dropouts and the frame with another layer of CF on and in the vacuum.

Swing arms with dropouts attached

It is amazing what experience does to the ease of laying on CF. This time when I did the frame I cut the CF into 2 pieces. One piece for the front end where it angles up and one much longer piece for the remainder. I also used 3M spray adhesive to glue the CF to the frame as I laid it on. This prevented the sagging and sliding problem I had on the first layer. From how it looked going into the vacuum bag, it is going to be very nice. Once this layer cures I will be ready to attach the headtube and the swing arm pivot. I may also do the cutouts for the bottom bracket and chain management idlers.

Check out the new pink nylon peel ply!!

I ran out of epoxy this morning doing the frame, so I have to make a run to Kingston to get more today as tonight I plan on putting another layer of CF on the swing arms as the bonding epoxy will be cured by tonight. The next tube that goes on the swing arms will wrap around the dropouts and really start to strengthen and stiffen the entire arms. By tomorrow I am hoping to have the shock mount/cross piece on the swing arm.

I also need to spend a few minutes today doing a shop cleanup, well not really a shop cleanup, more like a basement floor cleanup. Someday I will have a shop and I will be able to actually work while I sit or stand instead of kneeling or sitting on the floor. At least this is a bit of exercise since I haven't been able to put much time to working out as of late.

A disaster to some, a genius at work to others!

Peel-ply vs nylon and breather fabric vs paper towel

When I first started researching how to do CF work I pretty much only read a couple of bike builders websites and blogs and got info from CF supplier websites. I quickly assumed that most of the materials required were specifically created for CF work. This includes the peel-ply which is the nylon fabric that you lay directly on top of your wetted CF and epoxy. As the epoxy cures, this fabric creates a slightly rough finish so the next layer will have good surface to adhere to. As well, the PP does not stick to the CF after it is cured and with a bit of persuasion, peels off. The other characteristic is the PP allows excess epoxy to soak through so you don't get any extra epoxy in your layer. The excess is pulled through the PP by the vacuum (or other pressure if you used a wrapping pressure) and is soaked up by a breather fabric. This leads me to other mysterious material that at first seemed specifically created just for CF work. Breather fabric is a polyester batting, something like you would see in a cheap blanket. This material serves two purposes when vacuum bagging. First it allows the air to be pulled out from the entire bag by the vacuum and second, it soaks up the excess epoxy that is pulled out through the PP.
I ordered my PP and breather from CF supply companies, and although they weren't overly expensive, they did cost a bit extra to get because I paid shipping and a brokerage fee to get them into Canada from the US.
Last week I did some reading on a RC airplane bulletin board and learned that many in that community use regular nylon from the fabric store as PP and paper towel as breather. On the weekend I went to the fabric store and bought some beautiful pink nylon from the clearance bin and put a roll of paper towel in the workshop to try as breather. Last night when I did my swing arm layup I threw together a balsa and scrap CF piece into the vacuum bag. I wrapped it with the pink nylon and used paper towel as breather. This morning when I took it out of the vacuum the nylon peeled off very easily and the paper towel was hardened with epoxy the same way the polyester was. A successful experiment and money will be saved in the future!!

Adding layers

Progress is slow but sure. I am back to normal after the two weeks off following my eye surgery. I can sand, grind, lift, etc now so things will progress faster. I am also off work this week so I have many hours to spend on the bike. All our house jobs are finished now and the house is ready to go on the market as soon as we have the official posting instruction. This is a bit of a new deadline for bike completion, as my "workshop" makes the basement look like a disaster. It is actually the workshop of a genius, but some prospective home buyers may not see this the same way as I do!!!

Last night I put the first layer of CF on the swing arms, this morning I added the second layer. These are 18" long made from pink styrofoam and will join the rear dropouts to the swing arm pivot under the seat. The shock will attach to these via a cross member that hasn't been built yet. I can't build the cross member until I have the bike in the shape of a.....bike as I can't engineer the dimensions exactly. The distance from the swing arm pivot to the rear axle is 20". Based on my 2D drawing of the rear tire pivot this will give me sufficient clearance for tire - seat clearance when I hit bumps and will allow the shock to bottom out before the seat hits the tire. The pic to the right is the swing arms in the vacuum bag with the second layer of CF applied. The second job of this morning was to put a second layer on the front end of the frame. I layed a 3" strip up one side, around the front where the headtube will go and then down the other side. I then clamped two pieces of laminate flooring to sandwich everything and applied a clamp to the front to hold in the actual headtube in order to give the front the necessary curve for the headtube to be bonded into after a couple more layers of CF are applied to the complete frame.

Seat Frames

My eye is recovering well, but the Doctor wanted me to wait until this coming Thursday before I get into any heavy work or dust. So no grinding or sanding on the frame yet. It is still in the slightly fuzzy and rough condition from my first carbon lay-up challenge.

Today I worked on the rear drop outs and the seat frame. The seat frame is made from balsa and is covered in the first layer of CF tube. They are currently in the vacuum bag overnight. I am definitely getting better at laying up the CF. They key is to do a complete walk through of every step before mixing the epoxy. Once the hardener is mixed in, there is no time to think about how you are going to do something, such as put the pieces into the vacuum bag without the peel ply getting all messed up. Todays layup went really well. So far it looks like the seat edge, which is the most important part to be flat, is going to be nice and smooth. This is the edge where the balsa/CF seat slats are going to sit and be bonded to.

I also bonded the balsa/CF read drop out pieces to the aluminum drop outs off the Rocky parts bike. I used West System 404 filler mixed with the epoxy to make a ketchup consistency. This was used to fill some of the gap between the rough pieces and to create a filet around the inside curve. In one of the photos you can see a white area. This is the thickened epoxy as it cures.

Last week I did my epoxy work in the upstairs bathroom with the fan on and then took the pieces down two floors into the basement to put them in the vacuum bag. Although this worked and I was very careful covering the bathroom cupboard with plastic sheet, the inevitable happened and I dropped some epoxy into the sink. Of course I didn't find it to clean, it was discovered by Mrs. LaidbackDave. Ooops. She chipped it  out and I decided to try doing my epoxy in the basement today. It worked very well and the smell wasn't bad at all. I now have a quasi-workshop area setup in a corner of the basement that is traditionally our stationary bike riding area.

I have next week off work, I will share my time working on the house (it will be up for sale soon) and working on my bike. I think in two weeks I should have the wheels on and will be working on the handlebars and mounting the chain, cables, brake lines, etc.

More carbon and some seat action

Things are going along slowly but surely. I had cataract surgery this week, so I have strict instructions to not strain myself or get around any dust. That pretty much restricts me to doing light work that doesn't involve grinding or sanding.

I decided I could do some small part carbon layups and work with balsa wood. In the photo of the carbon parts you can see six small parts. The two large rectangles are balsa sandwiched between one layer of carbon on either side. These will become the seat mounts and will also be the upper shock mount. They will get bonded and carbonned to the main framed. The two small rectangles are plywood sandwiched with carbon, they will be the front parts of the swing arm. They will have 10mm slots cut in the bottom side to allow them to attach to the axle of the hub I am using for the pivot point. The odd shaped small parts are the rear dropout connectors. They will go between the foam swing arm extensions and the aluminum dropouts from the Rocky that I cut up.

The balsa part is one of the two seat frames. Once the glue dries, this will be shaped a bit to the curve of my back/butt, and cut to size. One the left is the seat bottom and the right is the back. Once I get this piece shaped, I will make a second one. These will be parallel seat frames, positioned about three inches apart. One they are CF'ed they will have balsa slats laid across them which will make the base and back of the seat. I will then layer them with a couple of layers of carbon. Pictures in the next few days will help clarify what I am trying to explain.

Progress is on track and there is no sign of good biking weather yet so I am not too pressured!!!!

Since I am off training for a few weeks due to the eye surgery, I should get a bit more work done on the bike. I need her on the road by the end of March so I can get some training miles and hills under my belt.  With my one hour of off-road recumbent experience, I'm not quite ready for the race in May!!

First Carbon Layup......

Well, I'm not sure if this should be titled first carbon layup, or first carbon lesson. I guess it was both, since I did get a layer of carbon on the frame and I learned about a thousand things of what to do and what not to do. I had read about pretty much every lesson I learned, but it is hard to put the lessons into practice, until you practice!! The piece isn't a thing of beauty, but it isn't a disaster either. Although I have some grinding and sanding to do, I am overall very happy with the result. When I put the piece into the vacuum bag I had a bit of shift of the peel ply and breather fabric (white fluff in photo). The result is some of the breather is laminated into the carbon. I have most of it trimmed down now and will remove the remainder with the dremel in the next couple of days.
The layup itself went well, however things started to get a bit stressful when the epoxy was getting tacky and I still had alot of dry CF. The big lesson from this is that I should work in smaller pieces for the remaining layups on the frame. I think I will do the rest in three pieces per layer. One at the rear with the angle down, one being the long centre bit and then one with the angle up and headtube area. I also need to have the frame suspended somehow, as this time I was rolling it on a sheet of plastic as I epoxied each side. It caused the CF to pull away from the foam, I would then need to go back and try to flatten that side while I worked on the opposite side. Having an octopus with me to help would have been good, however, I was by myself. All in all, an awesome step forward and I am no longer a CF beginner. Next step is to do some small carbon sheets and parts for the swing arm assembly.....

Slow Progress

I thought I was going to be ready to lay up some carbon last weekend, but I realized that I didn't have any peel-ply, which I thought was with the vacuum pump kit. Since there is no supplier of this material near here, I needed to order some. Today (Friday) I am going to pick it up in Kingston at West Marine. They ordered it in from the US so I wouldn't have to pay the courier and brokerage fee.

I did some redesign work in the swing arm/suspension/seat attachment area. I removed the "hump" that was for the seat mount. I am now planning on making some balsa/carbon laminate flat sheets to use for the rear shock and seat mount uprights. The sheet pieces will be epoxied and carbon wrapped to the rear end of the frame after the first two layers of carbon sleeve are on the frame. This will make the frame construction much easier as the carbon sleeves will shape very nice around the newly streamlined rear end.

I shaped the hub that I going to be using as the swing arm pivot. It started life as a rear freewheel hub. I ground down the spoke connection points to give me a nice small piece that needs to be wrapped in fibreglass then carbon and then will be mounted into the carved out frame piece with epoxy then wrapped/bonded with several layers of carbon.

The swing arm is starting to take shape, you can see the general lay out here. What is missing so far is the rear shock mount which will be custom built once the swing are is attached to the frame and I can get accurate measurements. The mount will be a "U" shaped mount which drops below the swing arm to allow for the necessary shock length.
The plywood and balsa pieces you see will be sandwiched in carbon to give me some mounting points for the front and rear swing arm components. The rear drop outs are from the Rocky Mountain that I cut up and got the bike components from. The paint will be ground off, the aluminum etched with a West System aluminum etch kit and then wrapped with fibreglass followed by carbon to bond them to the balsa and then the foam. It will become a big aluminum, balsa, foam, fibreglass, carbon sandwich. The front dropout will be sandwiched plywood/carbon and then I will cut the 10mm dropout shape for the hub/swingarm attachment. The rear end will be connect via a normal rear quick release skewer, which should allow for quick removal if that is ever required.