hotbike

I just got around to photographing this bike today. Underneath it's a 2000 Diamondback Assault EX with 6160 alloy frame. The seat, seatpost and battery and fairing mount are fiberglass:





How the fairing is mounted, note battery and cupholder:


Okay, I recognize that I've violated tradtion by basing my lowrider on an '80's Suzuki, and not a 60's or 70's Harley.
But the bike sure looks unique. It has 110 PSI Maxxis Hookworm tires.

I call it the Type 10.

Fast Eddie

uuuuuummmmmmmmmm.........uuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh.........i'm speechless.

Sledbikes

x2 i dont see anything lowrider about the bike the ride height is still the same i dig the wheelcovers

hotbike

This bike may be in a class by itself. Yeah, the seat isn't radically low, but I can sit on the seat with both heels on the ground. The "banana" seat lets me stretch my legs, because I can sit far back.
There is no laid-back seatpost that can handle my weight, so I went to this, which doesn't need a sissy bar.

The clear part of the windshield developed a crack, and then it broke, so I took it off. At least now it fits in the back of my minivan.
The original headlight cover was clear plastic, also. I chose to not use it and instead covered the opening with a white coroplast blanker-plate. There is a white/green blinkie on the center of the plate, and the two black objects above it are 12 volt piezo alarms, one is 86 decibels and the other is 115 decibels.
The headlights are on in the photos, they are 50 watts each. the one on the right is certified for road use, while the halogen on the left has too wide a beam, and is too intense for the eyes because it is only two inches in diameter.

(Fast Eddie: I'm going over to gravitybike dot com, to give a lecture on how to mount a fairing.)

Fast Eddie

i have a feeling that lecture will fall on def ears

im curious, how long did it take to build that bike?

Sledbikes

tou can make a laidback seatpost thats strong make a 90 then weld in a gusset using flat stock steel or angle iron. it looks odd without the full fairing appeal it looks like one of those power ranger bikes as it sits. i take lowriding rather seriously so i tend to get offended when some one calls a bike a lowrider without it laying on the pedal or lacks the capacity to throw sparks when turning.

Sledbikes

heres one of those crotch rocket bikes i had the opportunity to own one of these back in the day too bad the plastic wasnt as durable

hotbike

I didn't do it all in one day, but it took about four hours to lay-up the fiberglass for the front spar that holds the fairing, and another four hours to lay-up the 'glass for the seat.

I saved a lot of time by using the Suzuki fairing. If I made my own fairing , it would have taken longer.

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I positioned the seat where I felt most comfortable. I didn't want to build a recumbent, I wanted to be able to stand on the pedals. I can get a lot of torque to the pedals the way it is now.

This bike gets used a lot, just to go around the corner to Starbucks for a two dollar cup of coffee (that's why it has the cupholder).

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Maybe I should call it a Rice Rocket, or a Ricer. There is an awful big rift between American Lowriders and Japanese Ricers.


Answer this Question:

Would this bike look better if I painted it BLACK?

Fast Eddie

i dont know how much you weight, but i weigh around 185 and i had the stock seat post on my lowrider bent at a machine shop for 10 bucks. then i mount a comfy cruiser seat cuz i dont like the way bananna seats and sissy bars "clutter" up a bikes look. it hold me up just fine. i also had some 1/8" walled steel tubing bent at the same angle for some of my gravity speed bikes, ya cant put a seat clamp on em but i dont use those for seats anyway. dude, im sure that bike is fun to ride, but please be careful. a 10 pound lead battery on a bicycle, only fastened w/ rubber ties, and the rest of the additions you made look really dangerous. if you call that a gravity bike then you hurt yourself or someone else you'll shed a negative light on g-bikes, and thats not even a gravity bike. i have a thread here in alt bikes that has pics of one of the bikes i finished recently... THAT is a stock g-bike. fast eddie outty

hotbike

It is good that you are cautious about trusting fiberglass to support weight.

I weigh 240 or 250 , depending on which scale I use.

When I started this project, I had a tradional seatpost and seat, and I had the fiberglass support on the front so I could test it.

Of course , I had experience with fiberglass from a previous bicycle, the Type 9.
Let me get a photo of the Type 9, for comparison...
Here is the Type 9:
https://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...00000024-1.jpg

The Type Nine is hollow. It was cast over a plaster-of-paris form and polyester resin was used. The fiberglass is a quarter inch thick. I put eight thousand miles on the Type 9, and I carried things like ninety-four-pound bags of cement home from the masonry supply yard. Other times it carried limestone.
The seat on the Type 9 is cantilevered way the heck out, there is no seatpost under the fiberglass either.

The Type 10 might fail under load at some point, it is posible. I would rather test it untill it fails on me than to have it fail on someone else and get sued. I am more worried the front spar will fail than the seat-whatchamacallit, that replaced the seatpost. The seat is sitting on a block, under compression. It's not going to snap off.

When I built the Type 9, after the last of the fiberglass hardened, I tested it. I hit every part of the fiberglass with a ten-pound sledge hammer, and there was no cracking. Mellisa designed the fairing right, heh heh, if you hit the fairing square in the center with a sledge hammer, the hammer will bounce and hit you square in the forehead.
The man who bought the Type 9 was a auto-collision shop owner, and he asked if he could do the same test. He brought a claw hammer with him and I let him bang on it as he pleased. He was satisfied after hitting it four or five times, and then he gave me twelve hundred dollars.

I also want to point out that only woven fiberglass was used in the creation of these bikes, and not that cheap mat.

The Type 10 has held up so far. The battery is held down with a bungee cord and a rubber shock cord.
I thought about using tie-wire, but I'm afraid if the battery shifts , the tie-wire will short out the battery terminals.

Well, the supply of 1982 Suzuki GS fairings is exausted. I called two dozen motorcycle shops around the country and nobody has any. I may go back to making my own fairings.
If I can get my hands on a welder, I will weld steel for all the fairing supports. The local welding shop just got a tig welder two years ago, and the weldor hasn't set it up yet, and now his lease is up on his building by the RR station. I would rather have fiberglass supports than stick-welded supports.

I still haven't seen any photos of the inside of any of the faired G-bikes at gravitybike dot com. No one seems to be as forthcoming as I am. At least I'm showing my fairing supports. I know one way to mount a fairing is to weld quarter-twenty nuts to the headtube, and then just screw the fairing on with lengths of quarter-twenty threaded rod. I've seen that done.

Maybe I should keep to making fiberglass fairings and not making the supports out of fiberglass.
In the past, I had bad experiences with Aluminum, so I switched to fiberglass.

I'm getting old, s___ , I'm 42 now. Twenty years ago I loved the speed that a faired bike could go down hill. I'm older now, and there must be a million more cars in this county, so I'm more cautious.
Back between 1985 and 1990, I tested the fairings that I designed. I did as scientific a test as I could, I did not pedal at all.
The bikes (Type 4 and Type 5) went so fast, my feet would've never kept up with the pedals anyway.
Fairings can make a bike go faster, as long the road is straight.

Maybe I should BUY a stock G-Bike and then build a fairing around it?

Fast Eddie

i built my stock bikes w/ stock bmx frames, just gotta make sure that theyre either a full 20" from seat tube to head tube, or the next size up which would be the 24" cruiser size bmx frame. an steal frame would let you weld easily. the faired bikes ive seen used metal rods similar to the mounting systems sold w/ recumbent bike wind screens. since no one manufactures fairings, if ya make get your gonna have to also fabricate the mounting ware. since stock bikes still beat faired bikes sometimes i figure ill avoid the expense and trouble of a fiberglass shell. fast eddie outty