Doub11e Up

[chemmaan]

At the end of last summer one of my neighbors gave me this Giant/DUB collaboration bike that he had hanging in his garage for a while.



I threw some parts at it to get functional and rode it around the neighborhood for a couple of weeks before the snow started to fly. I like the low beefy look that it has, but there is one primary problem: It's too small for me to ride comfortably. Moving the seat back to the top of the tire just doesn't look right; the frame's not tall enough. But with it having a low step-through it would also be nice if his kids could still take it for a ride when I'm done customizing it. So at this point I almost needed to have two seats for it, one for kids and one for adults. After some thought, instead of swapping out seats for different riders, I figured I could scratch-build a King & Queen seat for it.



The king & queen seat would put me right in the style range for a classic chopper look. I'd like to go very basic with the mechanics so it'll probably be single speed & coaster brake. But I also want to use this build as an opportunity to build up some additional skills. I'd like to get more practice with frame work and airbrushing. I plan on adding a couple of degrees of rake to the neck. I'll keep the same triple trees, but swap out the fork tubes with the longer ones from an OCC chopper. The frame looks like it will handle a little stretching to fit an OCC rear tire. If not I have a WCC rear that fits just fine. The seat will need some support so a good size sissy bar will need to be fabbed up. And for an airbrushing canvas, I'll probably fiberglass up a fake gas tank.

Finally, I've been throwing around a bunch of spellings for the bike's name. "Double Up" seemed appropriate for the king & queen seat. And the double ones are a nice tie-in to Build-Off Eleven, but I feel like I'm missing a punny opportunity to not use the DUB in the name. What do you think? "Duble Up" looks like a typo and "DUB11e Up" doesn't look like double at all. Just leave it, right?

 

[chemmaan]

*---- Doub11e Up Build Thread Update Index ----*

1) May 1: Project plan & initial photos - Post #1
2) May 4: Front end swap and rear wheel assessment - Post #6

 

[raggedjim]

Just when I think I've seen everything, something else comes along!

Cool start, Rg

 

[LukeTheJoker]

Cool plan, I think you have the name right so far!

Luke.

 

[kingfish254]

I like your king/queen idea.

 

[chemmaan]

Okay, so with Mother Nature being less than cooperative (45 and raining since Sunday) I've needed to carve out a bit of room in the basement so I can get started. I think getting the existing stance is going to be necessary before I can decide how much rake I need to add to the neck. I'm using the rear rim off of a Schwinn crate as the front wheel to get the low profile look that I want. I know I'm going to have to refinish it after the mock-up so I only laced half of the spokes; just enough to hold the bike's weight.



Then I swapped out the original fork tubes with a placeholder set of OCC chopper forks. The OCC forks are a little bit longer.



I have a West Coast Choppers wheel in the rear until I decide how to get the OCC rear to fit. The bike is getting there but I definitely want to push that front wheel out there a little more. I'm not overly excited about the height difference between the tires at this point, but he seat will pretty much cover up the rear tire. And the sissy bar height should be close to the handlebars so that and the seat should bring look closer to what I want.



Time to see how tricky it's going to be to stuff the fat tire into the back of this frame.



Okay..... So that's going to be an inch or better to each side. I don't think that's going to be attainable by just spreading the stays. I'm going to have to contemplate whether swapping the fat tire into the frame is going to validate the amount of surgery needed on the frame. My initial plan of action for getting the tire to fit is to cut the seat stays at Point A and graft in some pieces from a donor frame. And if I go to the wider tire I'm going to need to swap in the wider crank from the OCC. That will enable me to spread the chain stays/lower frame at Point B. In order to make up for the length added when increasing the width at Point A I'll have to cut and splice some more tubing at Point C.



Well that was the plan until I flipped the frame over....



That bracing is not going to be the easiest piece to remove without destroying. Not that I can't make a new one, but it would be easier to realign the pieces if I could just split the brace and add in a filler piece.

So that's where I sit at this point. I need to make a go/no go decision on the OCC wide rear tire. From there I'll work on figuring out a framework for raking the neck and then onto the seat and sissy bar.

 

[Chad T]

Cool build. King/queen seat is a great idea. Front wheel looks really cool laced up like that!

 

[chemmaan]

Cool build. King/queen seat is a great idea. Front wheel looks really cool laced up like that!

Thanks! Yeah, I plan on putting in the rest of the spokes when I finish the build. It'll be a radial spoke pattern.

 

[OneHorsePower]