making a big bike (64) into a wee one (54). Can it be done?

[Sean350]

So, I had another nutty idea to take a large, lugged, steel frame and playing with it.
First, I would heat the lugs and pull out the top tube.
Next, I'd do the same to the head tube (leaving the headtube attached to the bottom lug.
Then, I'd heat up the seat cluster and remove it from seat tube and seat stays.

The point of this experiment is to see if I can transform a large bike into one that would fit me without taking apart the lower half of the frame.

If I cut the seat tube a few cms, and cut the head tube and top tube accordingly, it seems that in the re-heating process, the only angular adjustments I'd have to make would be where the seat stays attach to the dropouts?

I think this might be a good intro into how to build a nice lugged frame.

Any tips? Anyone done this before?
I know people have taken tubes out of lugs before, but has anyone done it with the intention of making the bike smaller?
Thanks in advance.
-Sean

[MichaelW]

Big bikes are rare, med bikes are common. Some big guy will have to go without a nice old lugged frame for this to work.
Big bikes often have shallow seat-tube angles so there is a lot of TT behind the bottom bracket. Sketch it out on paper using angles from a bike geometry chart and see what happens.
Occasionally they have higher bottom brackets.

[Peterpan1]

I'm sure you could do it. A lot of bikes get tossed on garbage day, and you can take TIG bikes appart and remake them into just about anything.

The actual parts for a frame if you buy reasonably priced parts first, aren't all that great. So whether wasting money on a full project's worth of junk, in terms of consumables and labour is really worth it... There is one tubeset that's well under 100...

[Nessism]

I'm sure you could do it. A lot of bikes get tossed on garbage day, and you can take TIG bikes appart and remake them into just about anything.

The actual parts for a frame if you buy reasonably priced parts first, aren't all that great. So whether wasting money on a full project's worth of junk, in terms of consumables and labour is really worth it... There is one tubeset that's well under 100...

You can get a full framebuilding kit (tubes, lugs, drop outs) from Joe Bringneli for $100. Considering the time it takes to build a frame, it's well worth the investment, especially considering that lugs are very difficult to recycle.

[Sean350]

Hi, thanks for the info. Where does one obtain the services of this Joe Bringheli (sp?) fellow?
$100 is for tubes and all lugs, or just tubes?
Thanks in advance.
-Sean

[Nessism]

Hi, thanks for the info. Where does one obtain the services of this Joe Bringheli (sp?) fellow?
$100 is for tubes and all lugs, or just tubes?
Thanks in advance.
-Sean

www.bringheli.com

He was selling ZeroTre tubesets for $50 (not sure about current price) so you should be able to get everything you need for about $100.

Good luck.

Ed

[Peterpan1]

That's the one I was thinking of, it way to light for anything I would want to do, but it's a start for other projects.