Ironykins

diy

Tags: bike (17) diy (16) opinion (4) project (14) winter (3) RSS

Bikezilla

Tagged: bike project diy

Technically, none of my bikes are the right size for me. That ends now. This is me finding a frame that fits and building a bike with my best parts. A new daily driver.

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The Joker: The Bike

Tagged: bike project diy

For a long time I’d been looking at folding bikes with muted desire in my heart. I didn’t particularly want to buy one, since I didn’t really need one. I also didn’t imagine they’d be that nice to ride. Full sized bikes are more modular and practical.

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Red Linus

Tagged: bike diy project

Last Autumn I had a windfall find: a red Linus cruiser bike with an internally geared hub. After plundering the rear wheel and using it all winter, I decided to rebuild the bike itself.

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The Raleigh Tangent

Tagged: bike diy project

My mission to build bikes for my friends continues. You may remember from my post about The Purple Cruiser that my dad found a couple nice 90s Mountain Bikes in the trash and I stole parts from them. One of the frames was garbage, but the other, a Raleigh Tangent, seemed to be in very good shape.

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Green Steel Trash

Tagged: bike diy project

As is probably plainly obvious to anyone who has spent any time browsing this site, most of my bike stuff (and general project stuff) comes from back alleys and thrift shops. I generally just take whatever I can find and work with it.

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Internal Gearing for Winter

Tagged: bike diy project winter

Last year I survived my first winter as a cyclist. This winter, I planned to do much the same thing - throw my leftover chain and brake pads on my old Huffy frame and wear it down over the winter, and then rebuild all my bikes in spring and return to easy, fairweather cycling. Winter, of course, had other plans for me.

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Fixing a thrifted Playstation 4

Tagged: diy

I like to frequent one or two thrift stores. Most of the time there’s very little there for you, and you leave empty handed. But as with everything in life, if you’re patient and consistent, you’ll be met with opportunities.

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The Apollo Aspire

Tagged: bike diy project

Late in the winter of 2022 I found a suspiciously nice bike in a back alley. It was a black and blue Apollo Aspire. Aside from missing a wheelset, it was in good shape. Finding a bike that nice was suspicious in its own right (hydro disc brakes and a solid groupset are rare things to find in the trash, usually all you find are department store bikes) but even more suspicious was the lock that was still haphazardly attached to the frame.

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The Tin Can

Tagged: bike diy project

As someone who gets their kicks from dragging bikes out of the garbage, I’m starting to have a problem where I’ve got too many bikes in various states of assembly. It’s currently winter and my basement, closet, and garden shed are all being used to store bike frames and wheels and other parts, while my winterized bike is the only one that sits outside fully assembled.

The only real way to mitigate this problem is to give bikes away.

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Trug

Tagged: bike project diy

There is a vehicle trend these days of luxurious, heavy, loud, obnoxious lifted pickup trucks. It’s caught on among suburbanites and inner city dwellers for some reason. In my city, you can’t go anywhere without seeing a vehicle with a front grill so tall they can’t see the car they’re tailgating.

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