Off camera we had to bend the arms on the pedal crank outward to clear the works...sort of a "Z" shape bend, out and then back parallel again. The local bike shop actually had a special tool with a long cheater bar on it designed for bending the arms (cold) that we borrowed. It's really made for making small tweaks on a bike that's been laid over or crashed. We needed a full 2" offset. I could not believe the steel arms would bend that much without heating them up but they did with a lot of persuading.
I said we did it "off camera" because there was a lot of swearing going on hahaha...
We sourced a 1/2" bore 10 Tooth, 35 pitch sprocket from Martin Company to fit the pto shaft. Then we got the mini jackshaft and clutch mounted.
We're trying a nos 300 Series (3" diameter) Comet clutch I had kicking around because we felt the small diameter fit the proportions of the bike better. Since the jackshaft is only turning roughly 1/4 crankshaft speed (3.6:1) achieving enough revs at the jackshaft to engage the clutch is a bit of a concern at this point. I have an old dealer service kit for these clutches and we installed the lightest engagement spring available (1100-1500 RPM). That equals approx. 4,000 -5400 engine RPM. Mounting the clutch directly to the 1/2" engine pto is just not practical.
Thanks.
I think I got a little carried away with the photos and I reached the limit in my album before I could finish the story. I found out I could increase my limit by becoming a supporting member, so we're back on board and I call it money well spent.
Yeah we thought about cutting it down to help keep the bike streamlined looking but were afraid if we un-soldered the joint and started fooling with it we would end up with a mess.
Bent up a fuel tank bracket and plug welded it to the frame behind the seat...
Added a strip of self stick foam padding on it :
And clamped the tank into place :
Thanks guys. My son had a 2 week break from school including 2 travel days so that was our time frame to build the bike from start to finish. We were thrashing on it 6-8 hrs a day every day.The project is actually close to completed, I'm just getting caught up on copying the photos over to the forum and trying not to overload the server or wear out our welcome here lol.
Looking at pictures of vintage BMX bikes online, we noticed a lot of the high end bikes of the day had a gusset behind the fork neck.
Of course we had to have one too....
