Keep on Rollin' baby...

Dang... 2 blog posts within an hour!
I'm on a roll... GET IT?

I'm funny.

So Fred the body-man and I went in on this Harbor Freight tubing roller together. I needed it for my motorcycle frame, and he wanted it for some custom car, garage stuff that he does. I think combining the 20% off coupon, plus the holiday sale, plus our (undeniably ravishing) good looks, we spent about $50 a piece for it. It pretty much lives at his garage, but it was a necessity for me and I was glad to go in halves with him on it instead of me paying for all of it for what may be a one-project use.
I could probably use it on my next motorcycle project, but I won't bring that up to my wife just yet...

So, this roller came with 1 inch, and 1.5 inch, round tubing dies... how convenient! That happens to be EXACTLY the diameters of tubing I'm using on my bike! How'd they know?
I mounted it to my vise using a length of 2x4 and started rolling. There are lots of 4x4 guys using this roller to make custom rock crawler roll cages and bumpers, and there are lots of youtube videos showing it... but I didn't know how much effort really went into it. Those guys must be bodybuilders because it took me about an hour and a half to go from this:

to THIS:

My hands and shoulders were actually sore. That is 1.5 x .083 wall-thickness tubing. I think the 4x4 guys are using at least .120?! Anyway, I guess that says something about my upper body strength doesn't it? Actually, to give myself a little grace, there is a guy selling a "tubing roller side-plate kit" which repositions the lower rollers farther apart which in turn, reduces the amount of force needed to bend, and run the tubing through the roller. He too must be a 135 pound hulk like me...

So, when rough-cut and mitered we're actually starting to take shape:

Now here's where I have to honestly say that I'm giddy looking at this picture. I have spent so much time thinking, drawing, planning, tooling, and then re-thinking, re-drawing and re-tooling this thing, and to see it like this makes me smile. Even if you hate it, and think it's a stupid project, I get all warm and tingly seeing all that time and effort manifest itself into a tangible, 3D object.
Dang. I did that.
Makes me feel good. I have TONS more to go, and to try and plan everything out all at once is truly overwhelming to me, but maybe it's a good thing that I have such a small budget. It gives me the time and freedom to really make sure I can plan out, and continue on with that next step.

Thanks for being there to share this with me.
Until next time...

Water jet was it.

After knowing in my gut that water jet cutting was probably the way to go, I sent some metal out to California to be cut properly. Hydrocut Waterjet was one of the only businesses (that I found) who offered a "no minimum" policy. Most places have a minimum of $150 just to turn their machine on which in my case was way too much for the few pieces I had to get cut.

So, this being my first time sending out digital files to a CAD system, I was hoping everything would work properly. I probably over-did it, but I sent printouts of what the final pieces should look like (to scale of course...) just to prevent being disappointed when I got the parts back!

So I wait a week, and this nice box is waiting for me on my doorstep...

Honestly, I was a little nervous to open the box, but when I did, I found this:

And THIS!

That is what I had in mind the whole time. And, it's about as perfect as you can get. The edge is like a fine bead-blasted finish. Pretty crazy for a high pressure stream of water with a little garnet dust in it!
They even left the parts "attached" in the steel plate by leaving a tiny hair of steel left uncut so all I had to do was bend the pieces back and forth a little to get them out. Kinda like when you'd remove model car parts from the plastic tree when building a model...

So, when attached to the engine they look like this:

 And with the rear frame tube attached, this:

It seems like I've been waiting FOREVER to get this far! ...but it has enabled me to finish up the design of the rear axle plates, disc hanger, chain adjusters, rear-end lifters for the rear stand, etc. Since my budget is ...um ...small, that was all I could do.

But, we're starting to get a little more momentum now.
I picked up my tubing roller from my friend Fred the body-man so I can start on the "main backbone" of the frame next. That will have the nice, gentle curve from the steering head to the rear of the engine. -That's where the roller comes in...

Check back soon!