Wheels

I'm basically at the point now where I have to start rebuilding with the new frame.  I'm at the bottom of the teardown/rebuild curve if you will.  Which means I need to focus on the wheels.  I bought these really cool 3 spoke wheels online.

 

Front 3 spoke wheel test fit

Rear 3 spoke wheel test fit

Of course, they aren't exactly matching.  The thru bolts that hold the wheels together are slightly bigger than the old snowflake wheels, so there's some trouble fitting the old hardware to the new wheels.

New wheels look sweet!

On the rear wheel, there's a sprocket that connects the chain to the motor (big one) and then on the other side, there's a freewheel that connects the rear tire to the pedals.

Blasted 23T freewheel with French Threads

Well, this freewheel is a ***** to get off.  Turns out you need a custom spanner wrench to get this baby free, so I machined one up and started after it.

Freewheel after removal with custom spanner

It was on there good, but after some teeth grinding and hammer blows, it came free.  However, when I went to put it on the new custom wheels, it would only get a couple turns and then jam.  Fuck!

After some web searching, I found out that the stock wheels were made in France and have a metric thread pitch of 25.4mm.  Almost every other freewheel has threads with a 24mm pitch.  So it aint gonna fit.

I set off around Raleigh to different moped shops and tried to track a freewheel down.  None of the places in town have anything cause they mostly produce scooters (lame).  Even that electric bicycle shop on Hillsborough didn't have anything for me.  But luckily, I stumbled across this old dingy shop called Cycle Logic next to a tattoo and piercing shop.  I went in and asked for a freewheel and this old codger started digging through a pile of sprockets and gears and came up with one that was almost perfect.  I couldn't believe it.  I brought the wheel in and bam, it went right on.  Only difference was it has 22 teeth instead of 23.  Not  a big deal.  Will be slightly harder to pedal, but I should be faster on the downhills if I use it as a bike.  $15 later and I was out the door.

22 Tooth Freewheel.  Made in Taiwan.

Dude charged me tax though.  I thought this weekend was tax free weekend here?

So anyway, back to the project.  Now that I had the freewheel, I was good to go and put things back together.  The new wheels came with their own drum brake hardware, but it didn't quite match up with the geometry of the forks, so I decided to put the hardware from the old wheels on these new ones.

Old Snowflake Wheel with Drum Brake

Drum Brake

The new drum brakes go in, but I have to use the old wheel shafts which are slightly smaller than the new shafts, and don't quite fill up the bearings inside the wheels so there's a bit of slop between the shaft and wheel.  Not good cause its putting pressure on the drum brakes, making things bind.  So my options are:

1.  Drop the new drum brakes in with the new shafts and modify the forks to work
2.  Try and use the old smaller shafts with the old drum brakes and live with the slop
3.  Forget this whole drum brake idea and get some disc brakes on this bad boy

Yeah, I like #3.  So now I need to find some disk brakes and hardware.

In the meantime though, decided to modify the forks to fit the new hardware and try and get this thing on its wheels before the end of the weekend.

Shaft don't fit.

Until you dremmel the **** out of it.

BAM.  Goes on now.

Of course none of the other hardware fits either.  Specifically the little doohicky that tells you how fast you're going.

This don't fit neither.

So I drill out the center hole to fit and find out that the little mating tabs on the underside of this bad-boy don't have anything to mate up to on the wheel.  It needs two notches on either side of the shaft to allow the inside of the speedometer to rotate with the wheel while the outside stays fixed.

Amazingly enough, I had just purchased this sweet laser pointer that marks a line on things from Harbour Freight for $13 bucks and it was perfect for marking a line across the wheel where I wanted to dremmel the notches.

It has a magnetic base, so I mounted it on the seatpost above the wheel and let it do its job.

Laser marker on top of seat post marking notches.

Laser marker in action.

Then I dremmeled some notches.

Front wheel with notches dremmeled in for speedometer.

After that and fashioning some spacers, I had enough to put the wheels on and stand her up. 

Frame with new wheels.

Looked pretty sweet, so I dry fitted the seat and handlebars to see what they look like.

Frame, wheels, handlebar, seat

And that about closes out the day.  I forgot to mention that the studs that the wheels come on didn't have enough nuts to lock everything together so I have to get some M12x1.0 nuts to put on there.  Add another to the list of custom parts.  Before I'm through, this won't have any original parts on it.