UCJ455

Recently I had to say bye to my good old 1981 Volvo the Fat Tony, and I thought it be a nice gesture to name this bike in memory of such a great car, hence its license number will now become a bike so it will keep on riding around.

This bike is a full 700c size 53cm frame/fork construction.

The frame was donated by Rob & Dorothy, and they told me that Rob went touring on this frame all around England. Nice one!

It has now been sandbalsted and powdercoated in "mother of pearl" color and fitted with the signature ferropur reflective decals.

The Brooks saddle was carefully restored by Busyman bicycles and it´s now back to being comfy as new plus it has a awesome vintage look to it.

UCJ455 has been fitted with bullhorn handlebars with triathlon brake levers and Fizik leather tape. This gives it a very nice "track" riding position that will ensure heaps of speed.

I went fancy this time and fitted golden front and rear DiaCompe brake calipers with tons of braking power, and to go with it it features also a golden single speed chain.

On the wheel department, UCJ455 is equipped with deep V track wheels with Quando hubs and also features a flip/flop transmission system so it can easily be ridden either as a fixie or singlespeed. The gear ratio is 48/16 with 180mm crank arms.

Update on 29er building process

The 29er frame is now ready to roll once the chain-stays / seat-stays reinforcements have been welded plus disc caliper mount.

Now we just have to make our minds on components and paint and off we go!

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3 0 5 3

...stands for the postcode of Carlton, Victoria, Australia and what better name for a bike that was hand built in Carlton and which frame was originally manufactured by Carlton Cycles Ltd Workshop England...

The frame and fork were of course made of high strength steel by old pommie hands back in the 60´s and has now been given a new look by professionally powdercoating it in a spectacular pearl white color and then fitted with the signature ferropur reflective decals.

Each ferropur bike so far has had a different type of handlebar to give it its own identity and riding feeling and this one is no exception. 3 0 5 3 is fitted with a 440mm riser bar and JetBlack Delta rubber grips, and feels bloody playful waiting for the lights to go green, no foot down allowed.

As usual only front brakes operated by a single digit brake lever and a flip/flop rear wheel system that allows freewheel or fixie setup.

Shiny blue rims and hubs will make this ride stand from the crowd and a 44/11 gear ratio will test your legs on the uphills but also will rocket you in the flats, downhill speed is up to your level of self preservation. As I read somewhere if you don´t like the pain then get a Vespa...

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MIURA

This is a story of death and rebirth. A tragedy that lead to the creation of two absolutely awesome bikes.

You might have read in this blog about the nightmare on bowen ln and how Dave´s bike got massacred there. From that we saved a number of parts, some of them helped to build Dave´s new ride and some other parts were kindly donated to the ferropur cause to create MIURA.

These parts included:

Mtb front and rear hub, presumably Shimano but the brand logo was gone...

160mm Avid disc rotors.

Voodoo Wanga steel frame size L.

The frame was taken to a professional welder for him to weld a couple of steel sleeves in the sections that had dents from the feral attack. This solution not only ensures that the dents won´t deform any futher but they also give the frame a unique look.

After this the frame was powder-coated in a shiny dark grey color.

Using these components the idea was to create a urban assault bike that could also be used offroad with minimum part change. Here is the list of components that this beauty features at the moment:

• FSA Chainrings - MTB Chainring Alloy CNC DH 3mm 104mm 34t Black.
• SRAM Chain PC1 Single Speed Chain.
• DT Swiss Spokes Champion Stainless PG Spokes Silver 2mm
• Shimano Deore Disc Brakes M575 - Ltd Edition Front - Post Mount - White
• Spank Tweet Grips TuggJob Grips Apple Red
• DMR Fork Rigid OW 2010 9mm Black - Disc Mount Only
• Brand-X QR Hollow Allen Key Skewer Set Red Cro-Mo
• Ritchey Headset Logic V2 Black 1.1/8"
• Tioga Handlebar Riser R60 Black 60mm Rise 680mm 25.4
• Brand-X Headset Spacers Alloy 2x5mm Black 1.1/8"
• DMR Seatpost 30.2mm Black 300mm
• DMR Seat Clamps Grab 30.2mm - Red
• Gusset Single Speed Conversion Kit 18t
• Octane One Stem Chemical 45mm Red 25.4mm
• Sun Ringle Rims MTB 26" Single Track Disc
• Michelin Tyres - MTB 26" Country Rock 26 x 1.75
• Mowa RED bottle cage and starnut bolts.
• Jetblack RED disc rotor bolts.

This bike is so wild you better get out of its way if you see it coming...

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Chapter 4: welding.

Here is where the good and bad stuff happens, you either get ur bike ready to roll or a pretty costly piece of junk, all depends on the quality and stiffness of your rig, the accuracy of tube alignment and of course the skill of the welder, among many other factors that in most case you are not even aware of until the worse happens...

To put things in perspective, the welding technique we used was TIG (Tugsten Inert Gas). That´s what the welder recommended since the metal was is so thin than with any other technique the risk to blow a hole while welding was too big.

Here are the results after the first welding session. We´ll have to take it back for some stays reinforcements to be welded and some filling to be done, but the bulk of the job is done now!

Dropouts. Still needs some filling for extra reinforcement.

Seatstay - Seat tube.

Bottom bracket.

Head tube.

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Chapter 3: IT MUST BE STEEL! it always was...

After a little chat with Javi "Piulo" Mr. welder we were informed that the wooden rig that we so carefully had put together was no good for welding. The tensions generated by the weld would easily moved out of position the bike tubes.

The only way to go was to build a sturdy metal frame that would hold the tubes in place no matter what.

So that´s what we did, we got 2m of 40x60cm steel profile and a good bunch of bolts and nuts and we set to design an awesome metal rig!

Since you must be able to extract the frame after welding, the structure had to be able to be disassembled.

It can be seen in the pictures how we designed several slots that would allow us to extract the frame after it had been welded.

Structure supporting the dropouts, chainstays and seatstays.

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Chapter 2: Tube mitering and bulding a rig.

I recently purchased a set of Columbus Zona high strength steel bike tubing from Hillbrinck up in NSW, and after setting my mind on the design, the next step was of course mitering all the tubes so they would match each other nicely. Since I don´t have a set of crown saws I have been using the freeware Tube miter which is simple as, but most useful! I recommend to check it out if you are into this stuff. This software allows you to enter the diameter of the tube to miter and the angle to meet, and it creates a stencil that you can position on the tube. Then is up to your grainding skills to get it right.

In order to get a good guide of where each tube should be sitting with respect to one another I printed a 1:1 print of the dessign and I put it on top of a sturdy wooden board.

As locking points I used an old bottom bracket to fix the BB tube to the board. To fix chainstays and seatstays I used an old and rusty rear hub which will give me the perfect separation between dropouts plus sets up the right distance for the stays.

Each tube is secured to the board by 2 allen screws which push from behind the board and a metal zip tie (plastic ones will melt when it comes to welding!). This way we have two points to regulate the heigh of each tube.

One 0f the most complicated steps is to position the right chainstay and seat stay since they extend underneath the guide board, therefore a hole had to be cut into the wood to allow the stays to go through, this however makes it easier to be secured onto the rig and therefore allows for a more stable joint that won´t move when it comes to welding.

Next step will be to position and secure the right seatstay.

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