We got a not-big convoy!

Howdy,
When I finished my bike trailer project I had some comments and requests in regards to seeing the trailer in action underway and under load. Well to keep all two of my faithful viewers happy I can certainly do that. I did a shot rip up the street and back and made a few mental notes about the trailer:

1. when loaded with heavy stuff, the trailer is heavy.
2. the brakes of the bike work but you need extra time to stop with over 100lbs(trailer+cargo) of extra weight strapped to the bike.
3. on a level bit of road the trailer isn't very noticeable.
4. I get funny looks from people when I leave the garage with any of my contraptions.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the little video. I've got the raw footage shot for a couple other little videos already as well so hopefully I'll have time to process those soon.

Video:

Post-Halloween pumpkin carving

So I haven't updated for a month. I've been taking care of real life things which seem to keep piling up in a big crap-stack of stress and inconvenience. C'est la vie. I'm updating now for what it's worth...

Being so busy recently I haven't really embarked on any crazy new projects but I've got a couple little bits of business to take care of. First off is Halloween. I carved up some last-minute pumpkins for Trick Or Treat Night and decided to add a little hillbilly flair to dress them up by incorporating a chainsaw that I dug out of the trash. blammo:



So I thought that for a proper sendoff to my faithful pumpkins I'd put a real chainsaw to them before stuffing them in the green bin. The following is the video evidence:

Chainsaws: fun in small packages.

Chainsaws are loud, smelly, violent, and dangerous little monsters. Pretty much the perfect backyard toy! Now, if you've picked up anything about old Jon here yet you may have noticed that I like to collect up discarded things and make them functional for little or no money. Chainsaws are no different.

I've been watching the "weekly treasures" (aka, garbage and recycling) for a while and have managed to pick up a couple old Homelite saws. I have NOT heard favorable things about this brand but I really don't know anything about chainsaws at all. That doesn't usually stop me.

Allow me to cut to the chase here: The grey/blue saw was found full of the most brutally stale fuel I've ever seen but was completely intact. I emptied the skanky fuel and cleaned out the carburetor a bit and to my surprise the saw started great and ran beautifully. I only had to spend a couple minutes adjusting the high/low needles on it. Now that it ran I discovered that the chain bar was pretty bargain-basement and the chain itself was about as sharp as a bag of wet mice. That brings me to the second saw.

The Red saw was of similar vintage and size to the blue/grey one but appears to have been dropped off of something very tall because the handle is broken mostly off at the two points where it connects to the main body of the saw. In fact if you check out the video you will see how someone even MORE crude than me whacked the thing back together with some wire and tin. It's pretty wobbly and nasty because of this so I didn't even bother running it. I did, however, notice that it had a more aggressive and actually sharp chain which was on a nicer bar that has the little pulley thing at the tip. Told you I don't know anything about chainsaws. :)

A quick swap of the chain and bar resulted in a good working saw for no money and probably about two hours of my time... which we all know is virtually worthless anyway. The only remaining bad part is that the muffler (which is actually just a spark arrestor and not a sound deadener) is pretty rusty and there's a hole in the side of it. I might have to invent some sort of replacement for that.

So... I guess the moral of the story again is that more people should reuse things instead of throwing them out. That said, whoever chucked out this old saw probably has some nice new one now that is half the weight and cuts with twice the power. Oh Well, I don't have a lot of trees to butcher, just the occasional storm-blown arboreal wreckage so I'm fine with a primitive old saw.

Here's the YouTube video evidence:

Project Trailer Trash Completed!

Howdy, Folks!

I won't bore you with a lot of details about the project in this post because most of that stuff is covered down in the previous post about it. I just wanted to let you know that I'm calling this one finished. I mention in this new video that the trailer is not a lightweight racing machine. I then had to weigh it out of my own curiosity and with the tongue attached it weighs in just over 23lbs. I have no idea if that's heavy or not for a bike trailer but it seems reasonable enough to me.

Since the last post here are the things I've checked off the To Do list to wrap it up:
1. chopped up and welded on some rear reflector mounts
2. added a decent reflector to the right wheel (original was all corrupt from UV punishment)
3. bolted the floor down to the frame
and
4. sorted out the reinforcement for the hitch

Here's a completion/update video just for fun:

Project Trailer Trash

Yo,

Project Trailer Trash is nearing completion and has been a load of fun so far. Here's the basic story: I found this bike trailer looking like a bag of hammered crap in the garbage but thought the basic frame looked good enough to salvage. Here's how it looked when I adopted it:



As you can see... pretty rough shape. Those side hoop parts that would normally form the roof support for the trailer are NOT supposed to fold down flat like that. It's almost as if some lunatic Ikea worker went on a coke-fueled bender and decided to convert this thing to flat-pack.

All of the nylon/canvassy stuff was weather-rotted and/or ripped so I cut that off and started work on the bare steel frame. There was a fair bit of stomping, pulling, and hammering to make the frame mostly straight in most directions but it came around. After getting it shaped up I did some repair welds in a few places and also shortened the centre crossbar because of how I was going to mount it... My welds must be getting better because I cut 3 inches out of the middle of that bar, welded it back together, and it would take my weight right on top of the weld.

Axle mounting was a major re-engineering job. The crushed original wheels had stupid proprietary axles so all of that original stuff had to go. In it's place I've fitted a couple of chunks of angle iron (bed frame rails from the garbage), a 26" steel mountainbike fork that has been split in half (from a garbage bike), and a couple of 20" alloy replacement wheels off of some other garbage bikes. This part is detailed in the video much better than I could do with text.

Once the frame was sorted out I turned to the hitch. I had seen other DIY builders online use lots of combos of the hardware I used for a hitch so I used several different ideas to employ whatever I had laying around for my hitch. The end result is here:



A swivel caster, an air-hose connector, and the end off of an air hose (from the garbage). It's almost self-explanatory but to get a real feel for how it works check it out in the video I'll post here somewhere.

I slapped together a plywood load floor out of some scrap wood and am now deciding how to mount it to the frame. Engineering has stopped at this point for some paint work to pretty the trailer up. I'll hopefully have another update soon showing the trailer completed and in action.

Happy building and biking!

VIDEO:

My Blogger.com maiden voyage.

Hello world?
I'm speaking to you from one of my favorite places: inside the internets. My other favorite place is my garage where I spend countless misguided hours tinkering, inventing, destroying, and otherwise messing about with tools and junk. Most of what I use or work on comes out of the garbage. I think I have some kind of sick fascination with reworking and reusing things that other people have thrown out. It might be because I'm cheap and free stuff is more fun than stuff I had to pay for.

In any case This blog and the accompanying YouTube video channel are going to serve as a visual documentation of some of the foolish stuff I waste my time on out in the garage.

We'll start this little journey with a bit about one of my shop tools: 4.5" angle grinder. One of my favorites in the arsenal. Some time ago the plastic handle broke off so I epoxied it back together and got another few months out of it till the inevitable happened and it went all to crap permanently. I looked around the shop and saw a new handle laying in wait. A little bit of wire wheel in the drill and a touch of mig welding later and I had the following new and very strong handle:



Yep. That's a railroad spike from an abandoned section of rail. That's how I roll. If you like that, stick around. We may just get along. Check out my YouTube channel over here: Froshmasta on YouTube