MAKE
YOUR OWN FOLDING MOUNTAIN BIKE
©
2014 Tor Pinney - All Rights Reserved
Forget those
expensive "marine" folding bikes for midgets.
Take a real mountain bike cruising for under $200.
A bicycle affords the
cruising sailor welcomed mobility ashore, for errands and for
exploration. Not surprisingly, quite a few sailors carry those
little folding bikes that originated in the 1980's with the
Dahon company. They're clever, functional and can stow in a
cockpit locker. However, with their small wheels they're limited
to fairly tame cycling. For more adventurous cruisers who crave
a real mountain bike on shore that also folds up for stowing
aboard, here is an alternative to the few, pricey manufactured
models available.
I picked up a good
quality, secondhand mountain bike for $100 at a pawn shop,
brought it to my local machine shop, and explained that I
wanted to take it cruising and needed it to fold in half so
I could fit it into one of the cavernous cockpit lockers
aboard my boat. The shop owner was intrigued by the
challenge, and together we kicked ideas around until we came
up with a plan for accomplishing this. He cut the bike frame
vertically in half, through the center of the horizontal and
diagonal strut bars. There he welded on a pair of very
simple hinges that stood proud, so that the folded bike
halves would leave a few inches of space in between for the
sprockets and gears. To lock the frame back together for
riding, he welded on a short length of flat bar one side of
each of the two cut frame pipes, then drilled through the
flat bars' free end and the adjacent frame tube to accept a
thru-bolt. It was simplicity itself, and strong.
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click photo to
enlarge
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Sadly, my
homemade
folding mountain bike was destroyed in a fire before I
needed to photograph it for this article.
This
photo of the barbecued remains may still be useful to
illustrate the hinges that we "invented."
L |
True, I need to disconnect
the gear shift cable to allow the handlebars to pivot 90º when
the bike is folded, and also remove the pedal opposite the
sprocket to achieve the slimmest possible profile, but these are
minor inconveniences. While my folding mountain bike may not
look quite as spiffy as its factory-made progenitors, it stows
just as conveniently and provides a vastly improved bicycling
experience ashore. Best of all, it's affordable!
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