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They Said
May 04, 2014
It has been said that the Office Cruncher won’t work – That may be true, but it will certainly sell. While I truly believe this and may someday make millions from it – I probably won’t develop the prototype further in the near future, so that steel tubing will get more use as a stand to raise the bike.
When the gearing arrived to make the bike run at cruising speed with a more sane engine speed, I had to raise the bike with a rope from the ceiling to change the rear sprocket – The previous owner had removed the center stand and while I planned to make the gizmo shown below (copied from the one made by the mechanic up the road for the race bike) I didn’t have my boss’ welder at the time and wanted to get that gearing changed. So I hung the bike by a rope.
Now if I need to change a tire or work on the brakes or something like that, I have a tool to raise the bike. If I employ it near the front of the engine, the front wheel comes up. Raise the bike with the stand’s rests to the rear and the back wheel comes up. Many thanks to Dave for the loan of the welder and chop saw, I was able to cobble this sturdy stand – warty welds and all (ok, it looks better after painting, but… it’s just a tool –
Oh yeah. The gearing… One tooth bigger on the front and three teeth smaller on the rear made the bike perfect! It needs a touch more clutch off the line, but within a few seconds of taking first to 7,000 then second to 7,000 then third to 7,000 we’re going 70! Clink to fourth, then fifth and the tach reads a smooth and easy 4,600. Ah… that’s more like it.
There was lots of forum advice given (don’t do it!) and some how-tos of sprocket changing methodologies, but in the end it was a piece of cake. I merely held the chain from going forward with a screw driver through some holes in the back of the swing arm and that gave me enough lock on the front sprocket to remove its big nut (with a 3 foot cheater on a 3/4″ breaker bar). Once the front sprocket was removed, I was able to do some housekeeping in the area and remove 35 years worth of crud and then it was super-simple to swap out the 41T rear sprocket for the fresh 38T that came in the mail.
I didn’t even need to remove any links from the chain – there was enough travel to pull the rear axle back about a half inch and get the chain properly adjusted.
Here’s the screw driver-in-the-holes-holding-the-chain-still picture.
The bike runs just the way I want it – It’s still a little tall, so the next thing will be fitting shorter rear shocks and pushing the fork tubes up through the clamps, giving a more squat, mean stance and allowing me to be flat-footed at the red lights.
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