Snapped frame:
The frame before going in for repairs at
Willi Fahnini's shop, Sidney Propeller:
work in progress, note the weird bars. They're Salsa Bell lap bars, 46cm which have a shallow drop and short reach as well as a 12degree flare on the drops. If that's not weird enough, someone had chopped about an inch of the ends of the drops, don't ask me why.
roughly how it looks now: None drive side because the bontrager cranks are nasty and need some work.
Frankencross is rideable! I've taken this beast to two competitions already and it performs, well, much better than expected. The problem lies not with the bike, but with the motor of the operator.
After plans to get a "
real cross bike" fell through because of the eternal brokeness, I had to work something else out. Frankencross is what I came up with. It's a Bianchi Volpe Frame which I had laying around and seemed perfect to make something happen. The frame was snapped by the rear dropout but since it's steel, it was not too hard to get welded up and ready for action. I took it out to Sidney where Willi Fahnini welded it up for me. Willi is a really nice guy and it's cool to go there and meet him. He's also made quite a few custom frames through the years and still does, but it has always sort of been a side project of his propeller/marine work. But back to Frankencross. After having Willi weld up the frame for me I went scrounging for parts. I bought a Tange fork from Capital City Cycles, found a bar, stem, housing, tires and brakes at Trek Vic. The saddle was from
Rider's as well as the seatpost, bb and cables. The cranks and pedals I had laying around, and Steve was kind enough to forward his donated wheelset to me. I only had to rebuild the rear wheel on a hub that I found in the junk bin at work. At this time I'm running it single speed, but hopefully I can score a bar-end shifter somewhere and run it as a 7 speed sometime in the future (old hub only accepts seven cogs, one chainring just because). But I'm in no rush, singlespeed is good for building form and strength, even though it is painfull as all hell.
Snapped frame:
work in progress, note the weird bars. They're Salsa Bell lap bars, 46cm which have a shallow drop and short reach as well as a 12degree flare on the drops. If that's not weird enough, someone had chopped about an inch of the ends of the drops, don't ask me why.
roughly how it looks now: None drive side because the bontrager cranks are nasty and need some work.
Frankencross is rideable! I've taken this beast to two competitions already and it performs, well, much better than expected. The problem lies not with the bike, but with the motor of the operator.
After plans to get a "real cross bike" fell through because of the eternal brokeness, I had to work something else out. Frankencross is what I came up with. It's a Bianchi Volpe Frame which I had laying around and seemed perfect to make something happen. The frame was snapped by the rear dropout but since it's steel, it was not too hard to get welded up and ready for action. I took it out to Sidney where Willi Fahnini welded it up for me. Willi is a really nice guy and it's cool to go there and meet him. He's also made quite a few custom frames through the years and still does, but it has always sort of been a side project of his propeller/marine work. But back to Frankencross. After having Willi weld up the frame for me I went scrounging for parts. I bought a Tange fork from Capital City Cycles, found a bar, stem, housing, tires and brakes at Trek Vic. The saddle was from Rider's as well as the seatpost, bb and cables. The cranks and pedals I had laying around, and Steve was kind enough to forward his donated wheelset to me. I only had to rebuild the rear wheel on a hub that I found in the junk bin at work. At this time I'm running it single speed, but hopefully I can score a bar-end shifter somewhere and run it as a 7 speed sometime in the future (old hub only accepts seven cogs, one chainring just because). But I'm in no rush, singlespeed is good for building form and strength, even though it is painfull as all hell.
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