My Klunkerz.

yer I know I could, I just quite bring myself to do that. lol been keeping my eyes on skips for something, I'm in no rush, if it comes to it I'll make a set of yolks instead.

gooseneck = stem.

saddle, can it move back any on the rails? it looks like hell on earth to me, I hate wide saddles, they aren't designed for people who ride bikes. lower it if you can, it's designed to be in the wrong position for riding to be comfortable, won't do your knees much cop but your harris might fair a bit better.

as to the ape hangers (Stupid bars), it's a hark to one of them motorised choppers, again, not designed to be used for someone who rides bikes.

as a bike is isn't really intended to do more than cruise around, you doing an hour on it shows serious issues, 20 minutes tops for most owners so well done for that, now get you lumps read (in the head not the ).

reckon I'd be tempted to ditch the rear brake (naughty boy), bodge a friction shifter on the top tube (suicide shifter if want to call it by a cool name) and route the front brake through the stem for cool factor.

Well i offered it to my mate who has been looking for an old type BMX. He took it, and it has since been stripped and painted red, he's a sprayer, and he's pretty good at this kind of stuff, so it should look pretty damn good when he's done! Speaking of old bikes, i have a little more to tell you about the Diamond Back... That thing continues to fight me every step of the way! The front forks, when you turned them to say they were a little stiff and crunchy would be the understatement of the year. No problem i thought, remove the bars, then remove the forks and grease everything up. After about 45 minutes the bars had been removed, they were pretty well jammed in there! Next stop, remove the forks. Well this took care of just over another hour!



I started with brute force, moved on to WD-40 and brute force, before eventually freeing the top nut off with fire... and brute force! Once removed the reason for the crunchyness was apparent...



Everything was dryer than a nuns gusset, and probably rustyer! Most importantly some of the bearings were missing! Where did they go? Initially i was just thinking that i'd grease this all up, and put it back together, but obviously this meant a trip to Halfrauds to pick up a fresh set. No matter, because i had questions for the guys at Halfrauds, mainly, can you build me a wheel please.



I have picked up two similar wheels for the Diamond Back, infact, apart from the colour, they are exactly the same, right down to the fact that they are both front wheels! So i removed the spokes from the red one, and removed the spokes from a rear wheel i had that had a steel rim, and took the parts to ask them if they could put them all together! The good news is that they think they probably can, and for just £25, so i left it with them! While i was there i also got them to remove a spindle from a bottom bracket so that i could use it on the Diamond Back as like the rest of the moving parts on that bike the original was a bit crunchy! I'm starting to wonder if its been in the sea! Anyway, they removed it for me, and even gave it a good clean up in their parts washer! It is now fitted, and looks like new! Slowly this thing is beginning to take shape, although it's put up such a fight, really i should've given up when the seatpost wouldn't come out! But the thing is, every time something is hard to do on it and i struggle, it makes it harder to just give up on it when i succeed. I'm in a vicious circle! However, it's now at a point where it is as stripped as it's ever going to be, so it should be easier from here on in as i'm reassembling it... And greasing it up as i go!

The Chopper has also received some attention, starting with the handlebars. No matter what i did with those ape hangers, i couldn't get them into a position where they were comfortable to ride with.



My feeling is that the problem is that the bit that you grip is curved back towards you, and as it's just below shoulder height it's not the best position for your hands and arms to be in. I need bars where the grips poke straight out the side, but they still needed to be quite tall. My solution was to dig through my parts stash, and find a set of BMX handlebars and pop them on. Unfortunately none of  the handle bars i had fitted because they all flared a little in the middle where they connect to the stem, and therefore were too wide. No matter, a quick trip to the tip yielded me this...



A Rhino Thrash... It just occured to me that i huge percentage of the bikes i get from the tip are brands that i've never heard of, although i think that a lot of the bikes are all made in the same factory and just sent off to different factories to have different manufacturers stickers put on them! Anyway, pretty soon the bars were removed, and fitted to the Long Beach...



My feeling is that from an aesthetic point of view they're not quite as pretty, but this may be due to the fact that they have not got a great amound of paint on them, and have some rust. But, from a comfort point of view... A++! Now then, that saddle!



Look at it, that thing has no right to give me any discomfort, its huge, it's padded, it's like the Parker Knoll of saddles. I should be wafting along in the lap of luxury. But i'm not! Oddly, i think that it is the size that causing the problem. However my feeling is that if i put a normal size sized saddle on it, then it will look ridiculous! Therefore, while i was shopping for BMX bikes, i found a bigish Gel Saddle on a Gary Fisher bike... Which i then liberated!



New slightly smaller Gel saddle on, and off we went. I didn't go too far, but already it feels so much better. I'm not sure if its the handlebars, the saddle, or the change from IZAL to Cushelle toilet paper thats made the difference, but it's definately better. My guess is that it's a combination of the three. It's never going to be brilliant to ride because of it's size, weight, and style, but thats not what it's about. For just cruising about on the flat, it is pretty good.



I'm still not completely sold on it, and i don't really know if theres a future for it in my collection or not, but what i do know is that i'm going to ride it about until the end of the summer, and make my desision on it when the autumn comes. To look at it in profile i'm not sure if it looks better or not, but nevermind, for now the big golden orb is out, so let's ride!

So back in the beginning of may i was talking about my FELT that had gone walkabout, and said this... Well, as predicted, i've not seen it since, i had my own theory on who may well have taken it, but i don't really want to think about it, as i sort of consider him to be a bit of a friend. However today I came home from work about 08:30hrs, and as usual parked my bike down my drive by my front door. I then took Pistonpoppet the younger to school in the car. Once she was dropped off, i headed for home, parked the car, and went inside for my breakfast... when i went back outside to ride back to work at about 09:30hrs, i found that infact i would be walking! AGAIN!! Oh dear, thought I, some delightful person has taken my bicycle! But no doubt you're wondering which one? Well...



The Kalkhoff Weltmeister!! WTF!? Actually i had various other bikes at home so i didn't need to walk. But whoever stole my Kalkhoff ignored The Carrera, the two Jamis', The Apollo, the Townsend, Various other mountain and road bikes, BMX's, a couple of racers, and the Chopper all of which were in plain sight and just took the Kalkhoff? Why? Why take the one that looks least likely to be any good? Now to my suspiscions, i was discussing just yesterday with the person who i think may know something about my bike dissappearances about why i like the Kalkhoff. My reasoning is that it rides really good, and because of what it is, and how it looks, it's undesireable, and therefore, unstealable... Maybe not! Now, on the day that my Felt went off for a ride without me, it was this fellas day off, and today, it's this fellas day off, and i've found him 'browsing' over my gate before! But like i said, i think (at the moment) we're friends... Time will tell! But what i can tell you right now is that i'm well and truely thoroughly urinated off about it getting stolen, and i actually want this back much more than i wanted the FELT back because this one i have fettled, this isn't as it came from the shop, it's mine, it was one that i was planning on keeping long term, and lastly, where am i going to find another Kalkhoff Weltmeister in this country? I actually feel quite violated about all this!

In the meantime i'm back out on the Townsend Topeka. I took it out today for the first time since getting the Kalhoff, and do you know what, i'm not sure i care for it all that much, so i took it back home, and got the big guns out... The Coker Monster, and because i let my eldest Pistonopppet have the day off from school as she was feeling a bit womanly and didn't fancy competing at Sports Day we decided to take an easy ride out for and hour or so...



I was wrong before when i said that the Falcon Long Beach was the hardest bike i'd ever ridden, it's been well over a year since my last ride on the Coker Monster, and frankly this is a hard bike to ride!



The problem is, believe it or not, not it's size! It's size it what makes this thing so damn cool! Looking at these photos of it together with my Eldest Pistonpoppets bike it makes hers look like a toy!



The problem is not even its weight, and it has plenty of that! The problem is that it has a very small crank, with very short arms, its about the size of the cranks that are fitted to bikes aimed at the under five brigade! It's very small, and this is so that when i'm peddling, i don't keep hitting my feet on the front wheel as i ride. So couple this tiny crank with the HUGE 36" wheels, and i feel that i'm maybe getting 100 rotations of the crank to every roatation of the rear wheel! It's got a Sturmey Archer three speed hub on the back but thats no help, i'm peddling like a maniac and just creeping along the road!! Still, this is probably giving me even more excercise than the Falcon Long Beach! I can almost feel the weight falling off me, or atleast i would if we didn't stop by the bakery on the way home for a pie and a donut! Still, after loosing another bike, and all that peddling i thought i deserved it, i even washed it all down with a bottle of Supermalt! Hmm... Probably put on more than i lost today!

Lastly, on to the Diamond Back, i am slowly piecing this together ready for the next owner to steal it from my property, and i think they will be very pleased with it when they do!



I've dug out some handlebars from my stash and a stem that i quite like.



I've even found a dunlop seat, but i've not located a seat post that fits properly yet, as all the ones i've got are either just too small, or just too big! The guys at Halfords are piecing together a rear wheel for me, and although i have a new pair of tyres for it, i have decided against using them.



This is because in my wisdom or otherwise i have decided that i would quite like a pair of white tyres for it! I want a skate park type tyre, about 26x2.0 in white, but as yet i am having trouble finding any, so if any of you good folk out there in internetland can advise me where i can find such a tyre, please do feel free to let me know! Although, to be fair i must say after my latest bike going missing i am wondering why i am bothering at all, as obviously i'll probably lose this one too... Lets hope not, but i really am now questioning what the point of doing any of this is, when someone can just help themselves to it if they please... Fokkers!! The other thing is, if you happen to have a mens Kalkhoff Weltmeister with a large frame kicking about that you no longer want, i'd be interested in becoming its next owner!

Thanks for the links Duncan, i appreciate that. I might have to go without the white tyres this month as i've invested in a lock instead, and some rather sturdy chain. Its funny, i never imagined that someone would take stuff out of my garden, it was right by my front door for crying out loud! I don't know what it is, but it really irritates me losing the Kalkhoff, for some reason i am far more irritated by this than i was by the loss of my FELT. I'm guessing this is because i put it together in such a way that i thought that any prospective bike thief would look at it and think that it wasn't worth the bother, just some old treader that nobody would want, i don't know, some people would steal the steam from your wee! I am hoping that it will turn up, and i have put pictures of it up all over farcebook in the hope that someone will see it, and say, oh yeah, thats abandonned at the bottom of my street! As i can't really believe that someone stole it to sell on. However, if it doesn't turn up, well hopefully i'll find another one to do. Speaking of another one to do, i had a bit of luck at the petrol station yesterday. As i was filling my Chev-suzu up with diesel a fella pulled up next to me with a trailer full of rubbish, but on the top was this old racing bike. So i asked him if he was dumping it, he said he was, so i asked him for it, and he gave it to me!! Hooraaaah! I put it in my truck and headed for Pistonpopper towers.



Once home gave it a brief glance over, then filled the tyres with some new wind, and headed off for a ride! Incredibly it is a bit more comfortable than the Giant was, but it's still not as i would have it. I have never liked dropped handlebars, and even though riding with these wasn't too bad, they will need to be changed! Anyway, after my little ride i thought i'd take a few photos showing it in more detail. Stand by...



Hmm, perhaps theres too much wind in there for those old tyres!



Haven't seen one of these bells for years!





Yep, those tyres have seen better days!



So have the wheels!







Its a ten speed. But best of all...



Thats my name! So i figured that i would tinker with it for a bit, even though i've never been a fan of red bikes, or anything else for that matter! So i headed off to the tip to see what parts i could scavenge. After a while i had liberated a couple more bikes from the tip, because i need more bikes!





A Raleigh Caprice because i liked the handlebars and brake levers etc, and a massive Raleigh Pioneer, for no reason whatsover except i thought as it was there it would be rude to leave it! Today after a raid on my parts stash and newly aqquired bikes i put all the ingredients together and came up with this.





Thoughts? I hate riding in the rain, but i took it for a quick spin anyway and it rides pretty good, although the chain is siezed in places and keeps jumping, so i've given it a good dousing of WD-40 hopefully after a bit of a longer ride it will free itself up. Time will of course tell, but hopefully i shall be able to put a few miles on it before someone steals it from me! Although hopefully now i've got a lock around it i might get to hang on to it for a while!

That Williams is really cool. I like the old school Sachs Huret stuff, but the wheels are knackered! I know you have some sort of irrational dislike of drop bars, but why did you change the cranks?

Those old Huret parts are indestructible, nothing wrong with 10 speed either for road use.

In an attempt to inspire Mr Popper, here's my newly acquired Twenty:
IMG_20170826_093650 by duncancmartin, on Flickr
The cotter in the LH crank is bad, the steering is odd (needs a headset rather than a nylon bush), and the saddle is horrific! I rode to my usual bikemonger to replace the seatpin (I have plenty of saddles), but they are shut because it's bank holiday Sunday! Bah!

Repeatedly pressing f5 here PP....

Sorry astranaut , I got sidetracked, and I was trying to decide the best way to keep you guys updated, but like duncanmartin said, I have updated the klunkerz site. I think that much like my Adventures In Car-Land thread I think that the best way to keep you guys updated, is to simply post a link here whenever I put up a new post.



There have been a few changes to my cycle stock, but I think when we left off I had the Williams, the Carrera, the Diamond Back, and some other junk, therefore here for you perusal are the latest links to those bikes...



Episode 81. Williams Racing Bike. (Part 3).



Episode 68. Carrera Subway Ltd. (Part 4).



Episode 79. Diamond Back Topanga. (Part 11).



Episode 71. The Monty W. (Part 4).

Now for some other junk that you may not have seen...



Episode 58. Daewoo Genius. (Part 1).

Episode 67. Daewoo Genius. (Part 2).

Episode 82. Daewoo Genius. (Part 3).



Episode 78. Tensor Tensuri. (Part 1)



Episode 75. Coker Monster. (Part 1).

Episode 76. Coker Monster. (Part 2).



Episode 74. Freespirit Sacremento. (Part 1).

Episode 77. Freespirit Sacremento. (Part 2).

and my latest project...



Episode 55. Triumph Palm Beach. (Part 1).

Episode 73. Triumph Palm Beach (Part 2).

Episode 83. Triumph Palm Beach (Part 3).

That should keep you chaps busy for a while, there are also a few other bikes there that you may not have seen, so if you should find yourself needing more, have a look around. I don't update klunkerz as often as I update my other blog, motorjournal for two reasons. Firstly I've not been doing much riding lately, I injured myself earlier in the summer, and have not really got back into my bikes since, I'm not sure why, but I will be trying to rectify this. Secondly, there just doesn't seem to be the interest in crappy old bikes, like there is interest in crappy old cars. Most of my cycling updates have still only been looked at in single figures, and the ones that are in double figures are only in the teens. So perhaps the interest is just not there, or, maybe I haven't advertised it enough. Anyhoo, if you do find that you are enjoying it, or my other blog, please do share the love, as having more readers sure does make a difference when I'm thinking about what to post next. Spending five or six hours taking photos, editing photos, and then writing the post does sometimes feel a bit pointless when nobody reads it. If however you are one of the few people who have read it, and are still reading it, I thankyou, and I hope you are enjoying it, and continue to enjoy it.

Anyway, thats enough blabbering on from me for a bit, I'll try to get something new up by the end of the week, and I'll post the link here.

Thanks for looking!