Just for giggles I trimmed the excess weld off with the mill. I'll still have to do some grinding and filing to blend in that nice straight line. I used my air filter as a template to lay out a radius on the newly created gusset. I was going to saw out the radius, but just for laughs I used the mill instead to rough cut the radius out.
Bike Bobber
- Thread starter massdrive
- Start date
With the outside clamp gusset roughed out its time to gusset the inside clamp. I'm going to use the flat on the inside of the frame rail to help lock the bracket in place when the clamps are tightened. This requires the gusset to transition from round at one end to flat at the other. I'll make the gusset from 3 piece's of aluminum, fitting and welding each piece as I go. First I cut out a small piece of aluminum 10mm wide, then I ground the edge of the welding table to match the inside radius of the clamp. I then clamped the 10 mm work piece to the table over hanging the ground edge, heated it up and bend it over the edge of the table. Next I milled a small piece of aluminum to match the width of the inside of the clamp and ground the edge's to the radius ( I made a tool or a die.) Then I clamped the tool to the welding table and clamped the 10 mm work piece to the tool heated it up and bent the other end over the tool. A little fitting and trimming and I have my first of three piece's done.
Attachments
I've been busy with customer parts and haven't had time to return to the brake arm. This is not a bad thing though. Currently I'm working on a children's two seat tricycle restoration for a client. I'm not doing the complete restoration just the metal work. It's in poor condition Here are some picks of what I started with. The front fork was full of gapping holes from someone whole thought they could braze the fork.
Attachments
So I finally found time to finish the fork on the tricycle project. Final tally is 25 hours to repair the fork and make new caps. There was no profit in this job, in fact I spent more in material and shop supplies than I got paid. I hate when that happens. I'm glad to see this one go home it was a real pain...
The 1st pic is what I started with. 2nd pick is the finished repair. The 3rd pic is the new fork caps I made out of 6061 aluminum. The 4th pic is the caps mocked up in place.
