its baaacccck! roller season baby! and this year I made my own "free motion" rollers. last year was mild here in NYC so I put this project off for almost a year.
Thanks to Bianchi10 for giving me the detailed plans. If you want them I can forward the plans he sent me through PM, or I guess you can also PM Bianchi10 and ask for them (I'm sure the plans are still in his sent box).
I pretty much followed his plans, with a little variation.
Things I figured out:
- the wheels are important. something with a bearing is needed to make things a lot easier. we both used rollerblade wheels. Rollerblade wheels are expensive new, but I found a pair of used rollerblades on my local craigslist for $20. I could've saved even more money because there were even cheaper listings - but these particular rollerblades had larger 78mm wheels. Had I realized that you could buy rollerblades with perfectly fine wheels for so cheap I would've done this project last year.
- find and use a vice and powerful drill. I have a small vice set up in my bike room, but only had my black and decker battery operated drill. it would work but I borrowed my neighbor's robust/powerful industrial plug-in drill (man that thing was nice!). Powerful drill + vice saved a ton of time since I could just drill directly because you'll be drilling through some thick metal.
just like bike rollers themselves - DIY free motion rollers are deceptively simple. it requires only 2 8ft 2X4s, rollerblade wheels, brackets nuts/bolts/washers, and bungee cords. All in all, including wheels, you can spend less than $50 on this project. Even cheaper if you already have some source for the wheels (old rollerblades lying around).
Old donor wheels from rollerblades bought from craigslist ($20).
I used headset reflector brackets taken from my spare parts bin as bumper brackets.
I was about to make a video of me hammering out of saddle no handed after only 30seconds of imaginary roller practice - but then I looked outside the window and realized that "screw this, its almost 60ºF and bright sunshine on December 3, here in NYC" saw the irony of wasting precious northeastern winter sunlight hours making free motion bike rollers and went outside for a proper ride.