https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e781947af4.jpg

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...121a61b6b8.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...352df4f5b9.jpg
Both on the same bike.

W.C. Fields would have thought "expendable small child" was redundant.

Or an optical conclusion or both, neither or....... :wtf:

;)

When your cranks are 9/16" but your pedals are 1/2"

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...039d91bf7c.jpg

When your rims are drilled for presta tubes:

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f3ce8030b7.jpg

I'll have to dig up the Polaroid from 1983 later to post. A working MTB made from a 531 A-D Inter 10 road frame that had been damaged in a Park stand. First step was to confirm that a fat knobby (Stumpjumper 2.125, the originals!) would fit the frame, I spread the rear dropouts waaaay apart and drove a block of wood nearly to the chainstay bridge, then forced the dropouts back together, bending the chainstays enough for tire clearance. Presto! Now for the fork. Bought a 26" BMX cruiser CroMo fork that had a steerer almost long enough, so I effectively lengthened it by cutting 1/4" off the top and 1/4" off the bottom of the head tube. Again, presto!

When that frame eventually broke across the seat tube just above the BB shell (notice not where I'd messed with it) I swapped the parts over to a Cimarron frame, and I have some pix of the parts on that bike which is still in use.

My "K-mart triple" crank made from a Fuji-branded Sugino Maxy double that I tripleized by adding a SunTour Perfect 22T cog (smallest with slots in a multiple of five to align with the bolts)
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c86db48973.jpg

Campy Record hubs from a local advertising paper (Remember those? Ours was the Trading Post); spoke holes had been drilled way oversize so I found 105ga. spokes for the wheel build and drilled the Araya 7x rims for the nipples.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...dcb1b2188f.jpg

Need a way to carry lunch, right? Warranty Pletscher rack was cracked at the front cross piece so I cut it off and drilled to make it a seatstay mount. Soubitez BB generator (since removed) attached to the seatstay bridge.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...37b55d8d7d.jpg

That original build with the MX fork needed a stem with .833 quill so I used a 4-bolt BMX item and a yellow motorcycle MX handlebar. It was a fun bike and the parts live on funly.

I was walking through a flea market one time and witnessed someone drilling the fork of a nice Cannondale to mount a front rack. They didn't drill all the way through the leg, since they were going to mount the rack with sheet metal screws.:twitchy:

A drill in the wrong hands can be dangerous! (a stick welder too).

All power tools, and many manual tools, are dangerous in the wrong hands. Jack hammers, sledge hammers, regular hammers, skip loaders, manual loaders (aka shovels), picks, power saws, manual saws, belt sanders, orbital sanders, hand-held sanding blocks, all have the potential to do real damage. In my teen years working on landscaping crews, I saw somebody do alarmingly dumb things with each and every one of said implements. And yes, in a couple of instances, I was the "somebody.":o

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...a3704d0cce.jpg

Found for sale on Craig's. (No, I didn't buy it.)
Quote from the ad: "Condition: Excellent"

As the originator, I will take a moment to pause and lecture about how the pictures of drilled-out stems & seatposts, to say nothing of crackhead bike crackery, are off topic to the thread, and do violence to its gentle spirt.

<moment>

Aannnd... back to the thread, which will drift where it will as it will.

--Shannon

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...a9782d4a1c.jpg
'La Creme de la Kludge'

Bella was a Good Idea:


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f4c57824d9.jpg
Bella @ Black Mesa

She is pretty funky, though! :)

In the spirit of the original thread, here a a couple of “hacks”. First up is converting this hybrid to

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d81af9d08.jpeg

this drop bar bike. The main reason was to make an aluminum touring bike because the hybrid has touring bike geometry. I found a set of 45mm gravel tires and put them on to see if they fit. They do with room to spare. The bike is going down to Tucson where the 45mm tires will come in handy on Tucson’s very mean alligator back streets.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5a609cfd7.jpeg

As a volunteer at my co-op, I often have to do things to make bikes work. Sometimes I’m astonished by what will actually work. Someone brought in this Centurion. The front derailer doesn’t route the cable under the bottom bracket but does so through a cable with the end of the cable stopped at the arm of the derailer. Putting on a modern derailer wouldn’t work because there wasn’t anyway to route the cable. We had to use the 1985 Suntour Spirit high normal. I didn’t think it would work with the indexed STI shifter but what did we have to lose?

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3c2916209.jpeg

Astonishingly, it worked perfectly…indexing and all.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7192add9a.jpeg

Just goes to show that you should try something before deciding it can’t work.

This was clearly a bad idea but as has been discussed several times it was ridden hard for 10 years like this for 1000's of miles.

One of the many things that make you go "Huh". ;)

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3aa47e1fd8.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9f475677d0.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...4512f55783.jpg

In the spirit of what the thread is kind of devolving into, I offer these gems.

First up a custom saddle covering that someone didn’t think all the way through. Maybe they had a thing for cactus…or just pain.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c2672e16b.jpeg

We get examples of Drillium all the time.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...a87929adf.jpeg

Maybe you should ride the bikes more often than every 15 years. That was the number of tree rings on the limb.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...092a334ae.jpeg

The handle bar is the wrong size. No problem! I got a TIG welder!

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0a94a0f91.jpeg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c0c149f4b.jpeg

Should have used narrower tires or oriented the brake pad spacers differently.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...02e715739.jpeg

Maybe they should have cut back on the oil.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...a38d66ee5.jpeg

I think they just opened a can of oil and poured it on. It was everywhere even on the shift levers and v-brakes.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5264bcc37.jpeg

Someone thought emery cloth would make a great tire liner. At least we now have lots of sand paper for fixing flats

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3ce5cf695.jpeg

Maybe a bit more air in the tires would have been warranted. At least they didn’t get any pinch flats! Ruined a wheel with an Industry 9 hub but they didn’t get any pinch flats!

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f85b5e933.jpeg

I have endless others that I don’t have pictures for. A recent one was someone who really did come in with disc brakes that weren’t working because he had squeaking brakes and cured it by…wait for it…by oiling the discs.

A long time ago, someone came in with a nice Specialized Epic dual suspension. He had removed the chain…by cutting through the seat stay. He wanted to know how he could join the seatstay back together. I sent him away without a solution.

We had a bike come in with a “bandage” on the top tube. It appeared to be epoxied in place and one of the volunteers eventually cut it off only to expose a about a 1” gap in the top tube.

For educational purposes, I'm gonna cite this for extra negative points. You'd think automatically, a stress riser, and true. But the seat stays are loaded in compression, and their slenderness lends them to buckling failure, and thus stiffness is the key factor, and not strength per se, and, the failure may not be preceded by warning cracks, but instead causing sudden, total, catastrophic failure (an actual engineering term). Buckling failure and causes is one of the least intuitive mechanical failure modes, usually not grasped before a class in Mechanics of Materials.

True, and what I "like" about it is he had not one, but 2 eyelet sets and still chose to drill the stays...

Thank you! I had not noticed that! Wow. Just... wow.

The tubing collapsed so easily, the nut wouldn't lock well, so they added a locking nut.

Look closely. Every one of those I've ever seen is stamped Spirt, not Spirit. It would be nice to know the etymology of that name choice.

Okay, that’s definitely a Mandela Effect moment. My brain has always filled in the missing “i”. I suspect that the name is a mistranslation. Back nearly 50 years ago we had a mass spectrometer from Hitachi (I think) that had an insatrucksion manual with all kinds of interesting other words in it.

Merriam-Webster says that it is an old version of the verb spurt as in “growth spurt” but that seem a very odd usage.

Now this, Ladies n' Germs, is what I'm talkin' aboot! From the whatever-in-hell-that-thing-is eyebolt thing, to the "use anything round with a hole through the middle" washer stacks used to square up the rack, and the pièce de résistance... or maybe coup de grâce... the presta valve caps as safety caps for the cut ends of the allthread. (That stuff can cut the crap outta ya!)

And Bella? Funky? Bella is funky enough to be George Clinton's bar bike.

--Shannon

I tried to fit Campy GS cranks on a build, and couldn't get the right BB axle length. Eventually wound up with one Campy cup, one Gipiemme cup and a Shimano axle. Franken-BB.

Fitting a full-size rear rack to my 20" folder frame, and a well-aft rack for heel clearance, I needed aftermarket extra-super-long stays, which were wider than the rack slots. I could have used washers as spacers, but instead ran the stays straight to the rack frame further aft, and attached with rubber covered stainless steel P-clamps; Better angle for fore/aft stability, stronger.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0bdb74c44c.jpg

The sticks zip-tied between the front brake-post rack and fork dropout eyelets, keep the front panniers out of the wheel spokes.

Duragrouch , nicely done! I own a similar Dahon that I've modified several different times. It is currently set-up with drop bars and Shimano 105 gear. But my plan after the new year for a redux is to use these items I just ordered from Velo Orange.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f7cef0b4a9.jpg
I also ordered matching brake cables.

The microSHIFT Advent set will be paired with my SRAM DualDrive 3-speed IGH rear wheel and a dynamo front. I plan to keep it as a "Zero Bike" at my daughter's home in Knoxville and use it for rides in the Smokies foothills.

If it works, it's not a "bad idea." :thumb: