Spooky Bikes

[suspectdevice]

Just finished up some fun photoshop work:

[Freddy Salgado]

spooky quote fri picfest #146: "He also makes other stuff like that replica of a prototype full suspension Yeti that he built in '90 that you see in the background. It was the first iteration of the first full suspension bike to win a World Cup DH race. #roots
He hates when I take pictures of fixtures. I was there and I can't really remember what this thing is for."

frank is god, thank him for sharing pictures from hollowed ground! i've said this somewhere before, the tooling & fixtures way more interesting than some of the stuff that comes out of them, unless of course its some new fangled fs prototype rig you guys might want to share photos of :)?

[suspectdevice]

FTW has a backlog of FTW frames and I have a backlog of Spooky frames but there is always some weird ass project going on when I get in. This morning was some sort of modification for a flat head Ford engine manifold doohickey or something like that for some 80 year old dude that used to be the #1hot-shit guy in the '50 and '60s. I guess he's famous because Frank was stoked.

Yesterday there was some sort of transaction involving a '70s Cinelli Super Corsa and a stack of half-rotten tubulars that have value to someone. My whole "office" is clogged up with vintage bicycles. I'm going to do something about it soon though. I have less-vintage bikes to throw in a pile too.

These fads seem to come and go every 2 years. The last one was building super-crazy race car and street car parts. It's hard to keep up with... Now he's into building vintage-inspired bikes.
Frank already makes cranks, forks, stems, handlebars and frames and has had to make headsets and hubs before. Add stainless steel and shit and you have an "artisan" bike, maybe build some primitive shifting into it... There's restoring old 4wd pickup trucks now too. If you get into work at 5 and leave at 5 7 days a week I guess you can do that though...

Frank doesn't feel comfortable being called a Frame Builder. He thinks of himself as a fabricator and welder. He just happens to be really skilled, passionate and experienced when it comes to building bike frames.

[zetroc]

mickey - is that 70s Cinelli the silver one FTW had on his flickr about two weeks ago?

[suspectdevice]

Yup. It's still over there <---------- Everything is a cm too big for me otherwise I'd go ride them and complain about how shitty they are.... That and glue.

[suspectdevice]

This is the car thingy that was laying on the floor today.

I don't know what is going to happen to it now but there are some bigass threads that got welded in there...

[zetroc]

Old Edelbrock cylinder head for a Ford flathead V8, if I had to guess. New spark plug threads?

[Cris]

Not just that; it looks like the plugs have been relocated to position the spark over a different area of the piston. Genius or madness, hard to
tell what's what, since "adjustments" like this usually have some type of consequence on cooling.

Mickey, for what it's worth, I thought your post earlier this year on the DH World Cup was some of the best writing done on that event.

Cris

Old Edelbrock cylinder head for a Ford flathead V8, if I had to guess. New spark plug threads?

[suspectdevice]

Not just that; it looks like the plugs have been relocated to position the spark over a different area of the piston. Genius or madness, hard to
tell what's what, since "adjustments" like this usually have some type of consequence on cooling.

Mickey, for what it's worth, I thought your post earlier this year on the DH World Cup was some of the best writing done on that event.

Cris

Thanks for the compliment Cris. Bike racing gets me all craaazy in the head. More accurately it might just balance all of the varying types of crazy so that I can eek a wee bit of enjoyment out of life. I could see becoming a boozy long-winded pundit, but thanks to the internet all of those positions are already filled.

As far as the cylinder head goes, who knows? Frank says the guy is the God of Flathead Fords, so it just might work. I get the impression that he's been doing the work for free out of respect for the dudes status and achievement. It's a family project with a grandson doing the Solidworks modeling, etc. It's great to see that sort of inter-generational stuff still happen.
Somehow a bunch of Cali desert rats find each other on the banks of the Connecticut river. Twain would have something to say about that.
I've seen some pictures of a few of the dragsters and flat-track racers Frank's built in the past. They look fast but not as fast as the DeLoreans from Back To The Future, although those were, unsurprisingly, not very fast at all.

also-
shiny is good.

A shiny frame in the bed of a '62 Dodge with a Slant Six.
How many esoteric types of internal combustion engines can I find at the shop? I guess I need to find out...

[the bottle ride]

I think I still have a bunch of chainrings out in the garage- I'll have to take a look to see what I've got. :)

Onza was a trip. The original owners Dan and Dave worked together at Tioga, started Onza in the late 80's and were hugely successful making bar ends. I started working with them on the side in '92 (mostly working on the clipless pedal design) and then was hired to work in R&D in '93. I think Onza held on for another two years after I left and then was eventually sold to maybe GT and then Dia Compe? Super Cycles Group in the UK owns the Onza name now.

When we started Real I didn't want to be involved with the money side of the business- I just wanted to make the best parts I could and make them in the U.S. My official title was Creative Director and later Vice President (whoop de doo.) I was in charge of initial product design and for lack of a better description, company image. This meant advertising, packaging, catalogs, t-shirts, show booths, etc. I also wrote all our product instructions, did some small prototype machine work/fabricating and manufacturing sourcing. Real was a lot of fun and I still keep in touch with a couple of the guys I worked with. For the most part we made some pretty decent parts that worked well. After I left Real it was sold to American Bicycle Group.

Jerome

Not sure how I missed this since I stalk the thread- but there is some amazing information on the VSalon.

[suspectdevice]

Not sure how I missed this since I stalk the thread- but there is some amazing information on the VSalon.

From various PM's and other interactions I've had it's pretty clear that about a bagillion people who have done or currently do neat stuff with bikes seem to hang out here.
The internet is a weird world. Useless piss ants such as myself type all sorts of bullshit that people who actually know what they're talking about read and laugh about. But no one knows... Beautiful.

[TRuss]

The past half page has made this my favorite thread on the Salon.

[suspectdevice]

Here's a link to a 1:30 minute tour of FTWindustries(and my 600 sqft out back).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankthewelder/6974710949/
If we ever get organized we could make a lot of bikes.

[jimcrom]

Was/is this a legit spooky frame? Just curious.



I noticed the seat tube looks a little different.

It was up on the auction block, but got taken down. Thank you.

[VeloRyan]

Judging by a few of the details like the integrated cable stops in the HT, the slot in the seat tube (where seat post is inserted) is facing to the side and the bracing on the chainstays it looks to me (which doesn't mean jack ;)) like a legit Spooky HS frame.

But need the man himself (Mickey) to sign off on its legitimacy.

[nahtnoj]

Havocstaff.

[jimcrom]

Yeah, all the small details seem there for a HavocStaff, even the rear derailleur hanger looks spot-on correct. The relief on the seat tube was the only thing strange to me. All academic at this point really. Thanks for helping.

[Lorotomas]

The relief on the seat tube was the only thing strange to me. All academic at this point really. Thanks for helping.

Mickey usually designs this feature on his custom road frames to increase tire clearance, you can fit 30c tires on those.

Jose

[suspectdevice]

Yeah, all the small details seem there for a HavocStaff, even the rear derailleur hanger looks spot-on correct. The relief on the seat tube was the only thing strange to me. All academic at this point really. Thanks for helping.

Anything with more than 67mm of bottombracket drop and 34.9mm seatube should have a dimple in my opinion.
Otherwise you're stuck with small tires as the tire nearly touches the seatube.
With a dimple the frames can fit 30c tires easily.
All of the havocstaff frames are dimpled and the majority of the custom frames are getting dimples too.

I'm thinking about ovalizing the ST the whole way down from the middle of the dimple, because I can.

[doubled]

Mickey, got a history lesson from one of zee german engineers the other night over beers about FTW, Yeti, Schwinn etc. It ruled.