Range of wheelbases (jig question)

[Mark Kelly]

I'm finishing the design of my third jig and need to find the best compromise between it being short enough to fit in the oven, light enough to easily carry but long enough to make different bikes.

So the question is: What's the longest wheelbase you think you'd need for a single*, non-cargo, bike? Put another way, where is the point at which you'd think "why'd you make it that short?".



* Single = one rider. I have tandems covered, the jig is modular so I can just add a module.

[Andrew R Stewart]

My touring bikes have had up to a 43" wheel base, and that's for a rather small frame size. Andy.

[EricKeller]

my experience is that you should make it as long as you can easily fit in your oven. I didn't really have this problem with wheelbase, but I ended up making an extension for the seat tube holder for bikes for ridiculously tall people

[mmoore]

wheelbase, realbase?
realbase.jpg

[Eric Estlund]

Do you need the wheel base, or the box size in which the longest top tub, longest chain stay, highest and lowest BB drops and tallest seat tube will fit in?

Seems you could plot out the extremes of what you think you want to build fairly easily?

[Mark Kelly]

Andy: thanks, that's the kind of info I'm looking for.

Eric and Eric: I will probably rebuild the oven soon so that's not a constraint. As I said the design is modular, I can make any individual module as tall as I want. I'm looking to model the rigidity at the maximal spacing between the head tube, seat tube and rear end modules. The sum of these dimensions is the wheelbase plus the width of one module.

I'm also thinking about potential markets for the jig, probably as a kit, if this is as much of an improvement over #2 as I think it will be.

[steve garro]

Surely there must be a formula for this sort of thing?






- Garro.