Steampunk rat from the 20s

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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


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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 :
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The bike features few interesting details:

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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.
 
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.

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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