Steampunk rat from the 20s

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Barkit

Barkit

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Hi everyone,

I recently bought an old (yet unidentified) bike from the 20s-30s which sat for almost a century in a barn and I made a rat rod out of it:
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Custom-DIY-el Cheapo emergency rear brake system :D :
p4pb11284007.jpg


p4pb11284006.jpg

p4pb11284004.jpg

p4pb11284002.jpg

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I can post more pics if anyone's interested.

Cheers
 
Did you make your own truss rods? Very stylish!
A good bike at the right place makes the perfect picture! Keep them coming.
 
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Welcome to RRB
Nice work
 
Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate!

@ QuickSand: no I didn't make them, I bought the fork bumpers separately.

Yet some other pictures :p :
146385DSC07945.jpg

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The bike features few interesting details:

787379DSC07930.jpg

Ghetto chain link with bolt and nut (apparently this was used as a "quick link" on old prewar bikes - not sure about that though...).

Regarding the rear brake, I needed a powerful (as far as braking power can go with rubber pads...) system to support the - rather weak - front rod brake in case of emergency braking. After a lot of tinkering, this is the best system I came up with:
181957DSC07944.jpg

You just pull the cable running along the top tube by hand, pretty muh like you would have done in old tramways to tell the driver to stop :D.
Initially, I tried to control the rear brake through the rod brake handle mounted onto the handlebar but the system was way too tricky to work good.
In the end, I love this system, the pulleys really match the aesthetic of the bike in my opinion and it works as intended.

The "siren" is an old item I got on ebay from 1920 used for duck hunting:
20931282_1_l.jpg

The sound is quite loud and most importantly...horrible (try to figure what a coughing rusted asthmatic robot would sound like and you will pretty much get the sound). All in all the perfect klaxon for a rat!
 
Very cool details! You may want to check that bolt in the chain though, looks like it might be a bit worn through, if it snaps while you are really cranking on the pedals you can get badly injured, I once went over the handlebars on my old BMX because of that...

Luke.
 
LukeTheJoker said:
Very cool details! You may want to check that bolt in the chain though, looks like it might be a bit worn through, if it snaps while you are really cranking on the pedals you can get badly injured, I once went over the handlebars on my old BMX because of that...

Luke.
Click to expand...

You are right, I noticed that already but very good point nonetheless. On the picture it looks worse than it actually is but that's definitly something I have to take care of rapidly.
 
Very cool, great work man, if you had those pics in black and white it would look right out of the time, nice shots.
 
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