hey, i barely know anything about welding, but i love bmx bikes and building them. anyone have any good pics of custom bikes?

 

I thought I was the only one that thought up dumb stuff like this! I've been wanting to make one ever since I can remember.

 

I considered making one... but havent had the time lately. Ive gone thro so many bikes.. usually they always get stolen tho.

 

It is hard. 4130 Chromoly steel can really only be welded well with a TIG welder. The tubing is also really thin, and you also really should have a jig of some sort constructed.
I'm going to give welding up a custom low-rider bike this summer, but it'll be all mild-steel and MIG welded.

 

I think John from Full-race used to do this for a living at one point. Other BMX riders that i know that weld are Geoff from full-race and Matt from One-fab.

 

I just recently made a lowrider/cruiser from a Mongoose. I had my uncle weld it up since I've never done chromoly and he MIG'd it. It works just fine.
I'll try to get some pics of it and post them.

 

I've done some small modifications with mountain bikes. I've found distributors for headset tubes, bottom bracket shells, brake tabs/posts, front/rear dropouts in various metals (aluminum, steel, chromoly, titanium) but the problem is finding someone that will sell actual bicycle frame tubing to a home builder. Places like Reynolds require you to be a certified bike frame builder and have the appropriate jigs, etc. before they'll sell you tubing. I've had luck with getting new year-old XL size framesets from a local shop for like $20 a piece since not too many people use the larger frames. I just cut them down at the welds and shorten them and use my own frame geometries. Only problem with that is that some framesets have tubing that is thicker at the joints but tapers down to a thinner gauge towards the middle of the tubes, can't really use those and shorten them because then you just have thinner tubing throughout the entire length of the frame.

 

I ride and i know of one kid who makes his own bikes they are heavy as s... and probably no one would ever ride one other than him and his friends but i think the website where he has some pictures of his frames is hcsbikes.com hope that helps if you want some quality bikes look into rider owned companys FBM Fit and S&M to name a couple

 

i wouldn't suggest building your own bike without a real frame jig. Their is a reason reynolds and columbus and such don't sell tubes to joe schmoe, it is a very big liability. My uncle built frames back in the day and got out of it due to the fact that he was worried about liability and having to carry all that insurance all the time. A BMX bike falling apart would be bad like no other, especially because they get shear stress when jumping and such. A break would most likely be catastrophic.

 

Not a BMX bike but a friend and I made this up a few years back for fun. It was fun,but the small wheel and long bars,forks made for some scary speed wobble,you really had to know how to handle it,but for cruising around the neighborhood,it was awesome. I let a retarded kid ride it once and it was a bad idea. He went full throttle right from the get go,blew through a stop sign rounded a corner and wiped out and rolled into a field,I thought it was gonna be funny,but in hindsight it was just as funny as it was dangerous which is to say it was hilarious. I'm glad the kid didn't get hurt though....

 

ha ha thats pretty cool

 

Ive Made Various parts here and there, never got to make a complete Frame though. Id like to at one point.
I was really considering having some made off of something I Wanted to come up with a while back.

I ride with a bunch of people here in austin that own their own bike companies, very few of them actually build them in house or themselves though.

 

whos there in austin building their own bikes? T1?

 

Terrible Ones bikes are built somewhere else, they have gone through numerous Manufacturers.
Rob-o went off on his own, he was here in austin for a while.
Jimmy levan is here in austin and owns i cant even remember.
Theres a few others, i havent been into the scene too much lately, so im not compleltly sure on those.




Modified by This One at 4:33 PM 7/14/2005

 

jimmy levan owns metal bikes and he is living in washington right now.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 88crxjdm88 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">jimmy levan owns metal bikes and he is living in washington right now. </TD></TR></TABLE>
he was here at one point

 

This is the extent of me building any part of a bike. But it wasnt built.

 

I'm too scared of having it brake while riding. Having a frame snap while just riding isn't bad but really "riding" it damn near deadly. I'll leave it to frame builders.

 

I used to machine parts back in the day, like 6 years ago. pegs, barends, seatpost clamps, headset bolts, chain tensioners

I always wanted to make a frame, but none of my welder friends have the workspace to lay out a nice jig table.

A good bmx frame would be 1/4" thick dropouts, like 4130 or 4140 plate (standard uses the 4140 which is more brittle on their machine parts which is why they get stress cracks alot), .035-.065" depending on tube, 4130 cromo tubing, machined bottom bracket and headtube, etc.

I went to woodward with a kid who worked for spooky cycles, who for a year had a monopoly on the "hardcore" bmx market. I think they were making t1, metal, fbm, and mutiny.

I would love to put together a custom frame though. If anyone has the means to do it, PM me.


21" sta geometry on a lightweight 6lb frame.

 

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21" sta geometry on a lightweight 6lb frame. </TD></TR></TABLE>



im on a 250s which is comparable IMO

 

i used to machien my own parts as well, pegs,barends,stems,mods to sprokets to fit bash gaurds. i ride flatland so its allabout light weighting to me. building a frame is very hard. to have a frame that is in the weight catigory of todays frames(4.5-6.5lbs) will take a miracle and a damn good welder to produce, they are using .030 wall doulbe butted tubes withc isnt cheap. and if you try and build a bike out of .060 straight tube its just gonna be a tank. i have a friend who started his own bike company and his bikes are from user friendly but they are getting better. then you have to have drop outs machined and you have to work about axel alignment and designing the drop out so that it is parralell to the ground. head tube angle,seat tube angle, chain stay lenght, top tube length, wheel base, top tube hight. you need to have the head tube and bottom brakets made or bought. it is alot of money and time to one off a frame. and frame jigs are not cheap $1000+ easy

just take 300 and get a nice FLY frame and call it a day

 

fly doesnt have warrantees or are they american made i would stick with S&M or fbm and that stem looks like the profile stem without the internal clamps kinda funny its hard to come up with new ideas for bike parts they are pretty much already born and dead or still on the market

 

i think rob-o went from t1 either to primo or to start Fit but i dont think he went with we the people they are german i thought?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by kyle92integ &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i think rob-o went from t1 either to primo or to start Fit but i dont think he went with we the people they are german i thought?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Rob-o always rode for primo i believe, he rode for DK back in the day.
I think you are right with Fit, I couldnt remember for sure its been a while

 

I remember WAAAYYYY back in the day i was racing in a NYS State qualifer and either the frame or the fork snapped coming down from a jump and the kid fell on the broken peice, it went up under his helmet, through the bottom of his jaw, through his mouth and almost to his brain...Luckly he survived. it was a VERY scary moment to watch...the bike he was riding was a Banzi (however its spelled,..the japanese tree lol), one of the first ALuminum BMX bikes. (ive oooolllddd school lol, i still have a few cracked up Titan titanium Frames if anyone remembers them )