Blue Tiger

[Wildcat]

A muscle bike for two, but only one set of cranks.

Either the front or rear rider will provide the pedaling, so the front and rear will also have foot pegs to enjoy the ride.

The front seat is for shorter riders and the rear should fit even the tallest riders.

Two frames are to be bolted together to make the bike. The crank spindle will serve as the bottom attachment and the upper part has yet to be worked out.
20 x 3.0 rear tire, 20 x 1.75 front. I was going for 3" front and rear but will meet all three requirements and have a big tire for my second bike. The oversize band brakes are ready to go.

More parts are ordered but this is most of it.

The frame uses an odd size crankset, and only comes in cottered style, but I made a dual chain ring cottered crank to have a choice of gears. That's what the tensioners are for, the chain will be long and have a choice of two gears.

This has been in the planning stages for awhile.

I may see about a decal for a head badge.

 

[Wildcat]

I mocked it up to get an idea of where the challenges will be. The alignment of the frames will take some more work. I can reverse the spindle to even it up.

Other than that, everything seemed to go ok. I wondered about the distance to the pedals from the rear seat but it measures at just the right length.

As for the bar to hold the upper part of the frames together, I think I can use two 16" long pieces of flatbar and use the seat collars as attachment points.

 

[Wildcat]

The rear footrests arrived. They will get attached where the frames mate up, and the front footpegs go on the fork.

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Look up the old Huffy Daisy tandem frame. It featured a cantilever frame in the front blending to a step thru in the back. Very similar to where you are going.

 

[Wildcat]

Those looked better than the other tandems back then with mostly straight tubes, and they gave the rear rider a little extra breathing room.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

I think the second post for the Stoker's handlebar mount might be adding a bit of legroom as well, my tandem has that bar mounted directly to the Captain's seatpost

 

[Wildcat]

It makes it about 8 feet long, but if you've ridden in back every inch helps. I have a 63 Schwinn tandem frame back in Florida with not much room in the rear at all.

My build is only about 6 feet long, but the rear banana seat allows extra room to sit over the rear tire. I was wondering how to reach the handlebars from the rear, but the front rider can put their feet up and steer. Nothing for the rear rider to hang onto except the sissy bar.
Just riding single will probably be on the front seat raised up pretty high. I may have to make up a longer seat post.

 

[Wildcat]

I found some handlebar stems that will fit in the fork, so it's going back to the 20" fork and also the 3" tire on both ends. I like the beefy look.

The rear of the frame is from a 24" city bike, made for the drop stands with horizontal dropouts, so the drop stand fits snugly.

Since both wheels are rear wheels, they each have the same brake disc but have different cogs. This has the 18 tooth on the rear for now with the 16 tooth cog on the front. Interchangeable wheels. That gives me 4 gears to choose from. 36 or 40 on the cranks, 16 or 18 on the cogs. With only one person pedaling a low gear may be the way to go. I'll see how well my wife does when we test it!

 

[Wildcat]

Here's where the front half and seat came from, a previous build, Playbike:

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Those looked better than the other tandems back then with mostly straight tubes, and they gave the rear rider a little extra breathing room.
View attachment 246897

Yep. That's the frame I used on Harlequin T. Since then I've seen a few built into burrito style cruiers.

 

[Wildcat]

Big change of plans. I have to go to Hawaii in a couple of weeks for healthcare, my insurance and medicare are useless here.

I will still get this done, but it won't need a frame mod. So it's a class one. I need to move the thread somehow.

I like the paint, and the seat is already covered, but I will still do it all up in blue tiger theme. I also will keep the big tires for the look but need to widen the chain stays slightly for clearance. I could also go back to the blue tires. Then it's a rider and done before I leave for Hawaii.

 

[Wildcat]

This will work better with the bigger frame. The smaller frame will be used for the Red Tiger and will be tailored for the smallest riders. The Blue Tiger will be the bigger frame (and bigger tires) bike that even I can ride easily. I've just started prepping for paint. This frame has been sitting for years and is very dirty and rusty.
Knocking out the cups.

 

[Wildcat]

It's time to get back to work on this. The paint will go on today. Something like this:

I have a new shiny chain wheel and cranks, but also have a couple of lucky 7 chain wheels that might be used for a 2 speed setup.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

That's a cool crank sprocket!

 

[Wildcat]

I'll probably stick with that sprocket. I measured and the bike will be too small for me even sitting all the way back, one speed will be ok.

It'll get given to some kid probably as I have no room left in the shop. The paint isn't perfect but it's a bent up frame to begin with so it's good to go. The toughest part is recovering that cheap banana seat again, which is next on the agenda.

 

[Pondo]

Paint job looks awesome!

 

[Wildcat]

I began to widen the rear to fit the 3" tire and realized it wasn't that strong a frame. I had one blue tire left and my shop cleaner guy found a 2.125 knobby under the bench. I though I used all of them. So, BT gets a front blue 1.75 and a 2.125 knobby rear tire. I also changed out the 80mm discs for the bigger 90mm brakes. And a 16 tooth cog with an 18 tooth cog up front. I'll probably take the cog off the front as the tires aren't the same now. I had planned to make it switch from a lower to higher gear by swapping wheels. The 36/16 setup is still a low gear, I may have to put a 44 tooth chain wheel on there.

 

[Wildcat]

I finally got around to covering the seat. I dreaded having to do it, but it went pretty smoothly.

These seats are all I can find over here and they are cheap. Just a pan with jagged cutouts to hold the cover on. At least the padding is thick.

I checked the gear ratio and it was way too low, even with a 44 tooth chain wheel it's on the low side.

 

[Ulu]

Those are exactly the seats that I have been buying here in California, but I have been reinforcing them by TIG welding up all the little slots.

It takes a long time because there’s over 20 different places you have to weld.

It was always my plan to build an adult banana from scratch, but once I found a big enough one for sale I decided to just modify it.

 

[Wildcat]

I'm in Hawaii now getting some quality healthcare and won't be back home in time before the end of the build, but the tigers will get done later this year.