89 Aerostar with a huge rack welded to the front of it
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Let’s take a picture of this frame in progress from a great distance so nobody can see whether it’s a horrible kludge or not:
(The only really horrible kludge is that the seattube is lifted away from the ID of the bottom bracket. It’s most likely that I’ll patch around that by laying a substantial fillet around the base of the ST lug, because I don’t have a large enough torch head to get enough BTUs into the joint to melt the brass so I can press it down without risking the silver on the DT coupler.)
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I think it is missing two pieces
Count again 
Damn Eric, your fresh joints are cleaner than a lot of other peoples finished work.
Thanks. That’s the goal! At one point years ago I read something from Jeff Lyon that was along the lines of “raw fillets as clean as some peoples filed work”. That idea always stuck with me as the point to aim for.
Did you listen to PVD’s interview with Rob English? Was funny when he talked about the rear stays.
A hit and a miss:
- capped pencil stays for the travel bike:
- A home made flat mount jig, which was fine except for the tiny detail that it ends up putting the brake about 2mm? too close to the rotor (and it may not be angled as far down as it should. I can’t verify that unless I can spin the wheel, and I can’t even fit the wheel when the brake is installed. Back to the drawing board with this one:
can you not slot that piece and allow for fine tuning?
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Maybe? I may just braze in a couple of m5 bolts, because there’s not very much room for adjustment with a flat-mount clampy boi. I’m using 5/16ths tubes, which give some room to wiggle around the bolts inside the tube.
We’ve been working through some flat mount related challenges and the one thing I have come to believe is that this is one of the cases where the comparatively expensive pre-made flat mount fittings are literally the only way to go.
The thought has crossed my mind, but you pay a pretty substantial weight penalty (~1-200 grams) for those castings, and I’m already paying a pretty stiff penalty for making lugged frames instead of fillet-brazing. I’m motivated here.
We had the same dilemma. Ultimately, the weight penalty is going to trump the potential fuckery of leaving the mount fully independent of the dropout.
This seems like a pretty not terrible option for what you’re going with.
https://www.paragonmachineworks.com/dr2070-steel-flat-mount-dropout-assembly.html
I used those dorpouts on the faat caad
is it possible or feasible to mill the castings for reduced weight, or is it just an inherent property of having a solid piece of material vs a series of tubes?
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Both. It’s why fancy ti brands use fancy 3d printed shit vs milled.
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…on the opposite end of the spectrum…
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Hey @Orc, how’s the Traffic comin?
It’s come to a complete screeching halt as the disco travel bike has eaten my brain. But, aside from the rack which I’m finishing gluing up right now (actually “right after I inhale some avocado rolls”) it’s doooooooone and I’ll be able to hack up a jig to hold the sliders in place while I glue them in tomorrow.
I’m not touching the fork until I get the sliders attached, because I may have to tweak the blade length to compensate for where the slider puts the dropouts.
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