Red Rat Ross gets some pedals
In keeping with the BMW theme, I wanted to do some things that would make you look twice.
BMW's are almost all flat-twin engines. They're air cooled, horizontally opposed engines, a lot like old Volkswagens, which you can guess I'm also familiar with... a bit too intimately for the last, oh, 23 years or so.
So what do you see on a BMW? The cylinders stick out the sides! What sticks out the sides of a bike? The pedals! I need pedals that look like cylinders!
I had a couple of old VW cylinders hanging around gathering rust, leftovers from blown up projects. I also have access to a great big bandsaw at work. Sounds like a plan! Well, easier said than done... turns out that cutting a thin-wall casting like a cast iron cylinder is tricky. The thin fins are brittle and like to snap off once the blade bears down on them too much. There was a lot of grinding, crunching, and PLINK noises from the saw. Even on the finest cut I could manage, there were still fins broken off.
However, I did eventually manage to achieve a couple things: I cut a flat into one side of the fins, that matches the flat cast into each cylinder. Once it started cutting, this went well and turned out a nicely finished piece. Then, I cut each flat section away from the rest of the cylinder, cutting a cross section or about 1/3 of the cylinder off on each side. More PLINKing and many more broken fins, including one domino-effect event that took out 7 or 8 at once! But it did cut off and I eventually had two flat finned pieces, and two little throwaway segments.
I wasn't sure how they would turn out when mounted to pedals. I found a really bent, rusty pair of junk pedals that didn't match, but were a left and a right. I cut the through-bolts and removed the end cap and pedal blocks. They basically fell apart leaving me just a spindle and the back piece of metal.
The heat on the welder had to be just right to weld a thick casting to the thin pedal metal.
The finished pieces do turn, a bit unhappily but they didn't really have good bearings to begin with. They tend to flip over but surprisingly will stay put once you place them flat. You want to wear boots when riding this bike!
There's lots more to come!! Stay tuned!
--=={{Rob}}==--
In keeping with the BMW theme, I wanted to do some things that would make you look twice.
BMW's are almost all flat-twin engines. They're air cooled, horizontally opposed engines, a lot like old Volkswagens, which you can guess I'm also familiar with... a bit too intimately for the last, oh, 23 years or so.
So what do you see on a BMW? The cylinders stick out the sides! What sticks out the sides of a bike? The pedals! I need pedals that look like cylinders!
I had a couple of old VW cylinders hanging around gathering rust, leftovers from blown up projects. I also have access to a great big bandsaw at work. Sounds like a plan! Well, easier said than done... turns out that cutting a thin-wall casting like a cast iron cylinder is tricky. The thin fins are brittle and like to snap off once the blade bears down on them too much. There was a lot of grinding, crunching, and PLINK noises from the saw. Even on the finest cut I could manage, there were still fins broken off.
However, I did eventually manage to achieve a couple things: I cut a flat into one side of the fins, that matches the flat cast into each cylinder. Once it started cutting, this went well and turned out a nicely finished piece. Then, I cut each flat section away from the rest of the cylinder, cutting a cross section or about 1/3 of the cylinder off on each side. More PLINKing and many more broken fins, including one domino-effect event that took out 7 or 8 at once! But it did cut off and I eventually had two flat finned pieces, and two little throwaway segments.
I wasn't sure how they would turn out when mounted to pedals. I found a really bent, rusty pair of junk pedals that didn't match, but were a left and a right. I cut the through-bolts and removed the end cap and pedal blocks. They basically fell apart leaving me just a spindle and the back piece of metal.
The heat on the welder had to be just right to weld a thick casting to the thin pedal metal.
The finished pieces do turn, a bit unhappily but they didn't really have good bearings to begin with. They tend to flip over but surprisingly will stay put once you place them flat. You want to wear boots when riding this bike!
There's lots more to come!! Stay tuned!
--=={{Rob}}==--